Effect of Cooking Methods on the Flavor of Jinhua Ham by GC-MS and Electronic Nose Analysis

Jinhua ham is popular in China because of its characteristic aroma. Unlike dry-cured western ham, it is cooked. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of three traditional cooking methods, steaming (B), boiling (C) and stewed ham Soup (S) on the volatiles in Jinhua ham (A). The volatiles were analyzed by Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) after extraction by Solid Phase Microextraction (SPME). The volatiles mainly consisted of alcohols, sulfur-containing compounds and cyclic compounds. Results from the Principal Components Analysis (PCA) showed A, C1, C3 (13, 18), B1, B2 (13) had the same volatiles, while B3 (22, 24, 36, 12, 30, 19, 23, 26), C2 (28, 33) and S1 (37, 27, 38), S3 (38, 8, 34); S2 (8, 17, 11) showed negative correlation with A, C1, C3, B1 and B2. The compounds generated by cooking the ham were dominated by Maillard reaction and lipid oxidation volatiles. Most importantly, many unsaturated hydrocarbons, such as 3-methyl-2-butenal, 2-heptenal were generating by different types of heating. The electronic nose analysis indicated that the cooking methods had great effect on the flavor profiles of the ham. The C2 appeared to have profile similar to the raw ham. However, C3 had different flavor profile from that for S1 and S2. The main source of the difference was that the profiles appeared to be high in sulfur-containing content in S1 and S2.