Volatile compounds produced during deodorization of soybean oil and their flavor significance

Freshly deodorized soybean oil has a characteristic nutty flavor but often yields no detectable headspace volatiles. The cause of this flavor was investigated by deodorizing soybean oil in an apparatus with a double cold trap that allowed the volatile compounds formed from the initial decomposition of hydroperoxides to be collected separately from those produced during the normal deodorization process. The chief volatile components from the normal deodorization process were hydrocarbons, which contributed little to no odor to the oil. The compounds with the greatest odor were carbonyls, especially heptanal and cis ‐4‐heptenal. Although these comonpents should accumulate at some steady‐state concentration in an oil during its deodorization, none seemed to account for the flavor of the deodorized oil. By using a particle detector, it was shown that small particles could be generated in the human mouth that could provide a mechanism to bring oil with nonvolatile flavor components into contact with the olfactory organ. Attempts to separate possible nonvolatile flavors in deodorized oil from triacylglycerides by chromatography on alumina or reaction with 2,4‐dinitrophenylhydrazine were unsuccessful. Possibly, the flavor is caused by the glycerol esters themselves.