Fusion PTR-TOF Tastes Chicken Soup

As the precepted flavor of food is strongly determined by the compounds entering the nose during mastication and swallowing, nosespace analysis is of particular importance for food and flavor scientists. Thus, PTR-MS coupled to a nosespacesampler has become an indispensable tool for food industry and research over the decades.

Several years ago, we attempted a nosespace study during the consumption of different instant soups utilizing a (back then) stateof- the-art PTR-MS instrument with about 5000 m/Δm mass resolution. To our surprise, we could not find reasonable correlations between flavor-relevant compounds in the soup and detected concentrations in the nosespace.