Chemical signature characterization of different coffee aroma notes.

The perception when drinking a cup of coffee is a complex multisensory experience. The involvement of all our senses, emotions and cognitive processes implied with a tasting modulate the perception [1, 2]. Aroma is a primary hedonic aspect of a coffee and plays a fundamental role in addressing the choice [3]; its composition can therefore be considered as a signature of the products [4, 5]. The chemistry behind the sensory experience is far from being clarified and both compositional data and sensory information alone neither fully explain the importance of key aroma compounds, nor indicate which of them is the origin of a distinct sensory note(s). The aim of this study is to reveal the chemical odor code (the signature) of different coffee aroma notes through a sensometric investigation of the relationships between volatiles compounds of coffees and sensory evaluations [6-7]. Coffee samples were sensorially evaluated through monadic profiling and analyzed by HS-SPME-GC-MS to obtain the fingerprints of their volatile fraction, and the results correlated through a statistical analysis. Results show a high degrees of association between chemical components and sensory evaluation affording the quali-quantitative identification of the volatiles related to a peculiar note and, thereby, to its chemical odor code. References [1] Chiralertpong A. et al. Chemosensory Perception (2008)¸ 2, 147. [2] Prescott J. Current Opinion in Food Science (2015), 3, 47. [3] Sunarharum W.B. et al. Food Research International, (2014), 62, 315. [4] Ruosi M.R. et al. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (2012), 60, 11283. [5] Liberto E. et al. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (2013), 61, 1652. [6] Bressanello D. et al. Food Chemistry, (2016), submitted [7] Cevallos-Cevallos J.M. et al. Trends in Food Science & Technology (2009), 20, 557.