| Abstract: | Sulfur compounds are generally accepted as being of high importance for sensory perception of meat flavour. The main problems of sulfur compounds' analysis are low flavour thresholds indicating high aroma effectiveness, high lability providing transformation into secondary products as well as active interaction with various organic substances present in meat systems. Probable pathways for formation and degradation of sulfur compounds are demonstrated. Sulfur compounds were isolated from volatiles of boiled beef by precipitation with mercuric chloride and regeneration. The separation of volatile amines and carbonyl compounds by derivatization remarkably improved the aroma of the samples. Gas Chromatographic identification with flame ionization and flame photometric detectors was accomplished on the base of retention index comparison on 4 glass columns of different polarity. Most of the peaks detected by FID were found to have identical index values in three different samples of beef. The comparison of the identification results with those of volatiles isolated from Maillard reaction products providing heated meat flavour, show large differences. It could be stated that regeneration products from mercuric chloride precipitates besides of sulfur compounds contain oxygen components as well as saturated and unsaturated hydrocarbons, too. |
