ABSTRACT
Since the mid-1950s, volatile flavor components have been studied in dairy products, and the chemistry and identification of milk and cheese flavors have been widely described in the literature. In the early 1990s, techniques for assessing these products were developed to stimulate the interest and educate consumers. Over the past few decades, flavor research has benefited from the improvements in instrumental analytical chemistry, and a vast number of investigations have been carried out on dairy flavor compounds, many of these were investigated following the advent of gas chromatography hyphenated to mass spectrometry or olfactometry. It is noteworthy that the identification of flavor components of dairy products is generally very difficult, mainly due to the tendency of these compounds to degrade or form artifacts during isolation processes, as well as their presence in low concentrations with respect to other food matrices. This chapter provides an overview of the most commonly applied analytical techniques to characterize dairy food flavor. The extended sample preparation theory will not be discussed, and the diverse dairy products investigation methodologies are outlined. Analytical flavor assessment techniques will be focused on gas chromatographic analyses, including theoretical principles and applications.
