Room odor evaluation of oils and cooking fats

Abstract
Panel evaluations have been made of room odors developed by edible oils and cooking fats heated to frying temperatures. Vegetable and mixed fat shortenings, as well as oils of different iodine value and from special processing, were investigated with and without added stabilizers. When silicones were added to frying fats, room odor scores improved markedly. Certain added autoxidative cleavage products had little effect on odor scores at levels where they were detected easily in taste tests. To be discernible in room odors, these additives had to be present at levels ca. 100‐fold greater than their taste thresholds. Panel results show that the undesirable frying odors contributed by unhydrogenated soybean oil in mixtures with other oils could be detected readily at 25% levels. As the level of soybean oil was lowered further, the room odor scores of oil mixtures improved perceptibly.