Volatile compound profiling from soybean oil in the heating process

Soybean oil heating or cooking is a very complicated process. In order to better understand the composition of the volatile compounds from soybean oil during heating process, volatile profiling was carried out through vacuum-assisted headspace solid-phase microextraction combined with GC-MS. As a result, a total of 72 volatile compounds were detected and identified during this process, including aldehydes (27), alcohols (14), ketones (10), furans (6), aromatic compounds (9), acids, and esters (6). And the forming temperature of each volatile was determined. Results show most of volatile aldehydes and alcohols were formed at 120°C leading to release off-flavor largely, which was considered as a critical temperature point for the formation of soybean oil flavor during the whole heating process. Meanwhile, ketones and furans were formed at 150°C, and acids were detected at 180°C. The content of most volatile compounds increased significantly with the temperature raised. Simultaneously, results of principal component analysis demonstrate that flavor characteristics of soybean oil have a big difference between higher and lower temperature in the heating process.