Aroma and optical absorption spectroscopy for quality assessment of vegetable cooking oils

Vegetable oils from different type of sources may have a distinctive aroma and flavour. This work explored the ability of combining PEN3 and UV-Vis Spectrophotometer for aroma and volatiles analysis. Nine types of vegetable oils were characterized and classified into three categories based on aroma and volatiles absorption characteristics which are fresh, heated and used cooking oil. The results of PCA analysis showed a good separation among three groups of vegetable cooking oil. Data set from both PEN3 (e-nose) and UV-Vis Spectroscopy was subjected to Linear Discriminant Analysis. Our results propose that discriminant analysis provides a rapid, efficient and accurate study for multi-class classification difficulties. LDA is capable to provide 100.0% correct classification of original grouped cases. However, only 85.4% of un-known grouped cases are correctly classified.