Prediction of flavour intensity of blackcurrant (Ribes nigrum L.) drinks from compositional data on fruit concentrates by partial least squares regression

Summary Concentration of fruit juice by reduced pressure distillation causes substantial loss of volatile components, and produces new less-volatile flavour compounds which affect the flavour of drinks prepared from the resulting concentrate. Free-choice profiling indicated that blackcurrant drinks could be classified into three groups, depending mainly on the extent of processing. the flavour intensity of a series of drinks prepared from blackcurrant concentrate was measured by sensory analysis using magnitude estimation, and 214 volatile components of the concentrates were quantified by capillary gas chromatography. Partial least squares regression was successful in modelling the perceived flavour intensity of the drinks from gas chromatographic data on concentrate composition.