Persistence effects in flavour release from liquids in the mouth

Summary The flavour of drinks, creams and liquid‐like food consumed without chewing is an important quality factor for consumers and manufacturers alike, so reliable predictive models of flavour release from liquids in the mouth are highly desirable. In this paper we show how the breath‐by‐breath concentration of aroma in the headspace after swallowing an aliquot of liquid can be modelled using basic principles of interfacial mass transfer. This mechanistic model is used to fit the experimental data for dilute aqueous solutions of five aroma compounds consumed by trained panellists. It is shown that many aroma compounds give detectable concentrations in the exhaled breath several minutes after swallowing and after ten or more exhalations. The influence of liquid composition on this aroma persistence effect is discussed.