Abstract/Summary

The shift in consumer landscape towards vegan, vegetarian and flexitarian diets has created an unprecedented challenge in creating meat aroma from plant-based alternatives. The search for potential vegan solutions has thus led to a renewed interest in authentic meat flavour profiles. To gain a better understanding of the qualitative odour differences between boiled beef and boiled chicken, aroma extracts were isolated using Likens-Nickerson simultaneous distillation-extraction (SDE), selected expressly because the in-situ heating of the sample facilitates the cap-ture of aroma intermediates during the cooking process, thereby mimicking the cooking of meat in stocks and stews. The extracts were then analysed by Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrome-try (GC-MS) and GC-Olfactometry (GC-O). Most of the volatiles identified in this study were sul-fur-containing compounds, such as sulfides, thiols, mercaptoaldehydes and mercaptoketones, which are derived from the Maillard reaction. Meanwhile, lipid oxidation results in the for-mation of unsaturated aldehydes, such as alkenals and alkadienals. Families of thiazoles and 3-thiazolines were found in the extracts. Two novel 3-thiazolines (5-ethyl-2,4-dimethyl-3-thiazoline and 2-ethyl-4,5-dimethyl-3-thiazoline) which may also contribute to the meaty aroma were identified in this work and synthesised from their respective aldehyde and mercapto-ketone precursors.