Application of Gas-Liquid Partition Chromatography to the Study of Volatile Flavor Compounds

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Abstract
Small amounts of compounds of bacterial and of chemical origin are not usually detected in milk products by ordinary chemical methods. Gas- liquid partition chromatography will, in some cases, remove this quantitative barrier and make it possible to more easily classify off-flavors. Editor. Until recently, the separation of small quantities of volatile mixtures was frequently difficult and sometimes not possible. Unless chemical means of sep- aration could be used, micro-fractionating devices were required. These demand certain minimal quantities, and if the boiling points of the volatiles are not sufficiently diverse, considerable efficiency is lost. About 15 years ago, Turner (15) suggested the principles of gas chroma- tography. Martin and Synge (10) extended these principles to volatiles and suggested the process of gas-liquid partition chromatography. Various workers (1-~, 12, 14, 15) have applied these techniques to hydrocarbon analyses, and others (5-9, 11, 12) have investigated such diverse materials as fatty acids, amines, alcohols, aldehydes, and ketones. The method shows promise for the study of natural flavor compounds because of the small amounts of material required and the high degree of resolution achieved. Work reported below illustrates the application of the method to a study of volatile compounds present in commercial starter distillate. The selection of starter distillate as a starting material was influenced both by its availability and by the desirability of establishing a correlation between specific chemical compounds and flavor characteristics in cultured dairy products.
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