Volatile organic compounds present in jerked beef, a traditional Brazilian meat product

Abstract

Jerked beef (JB) is a salty and dry meat product, which is considered the evolution of traditional charque (CH). Despite being a product subject to inspection by several government spheres, its production process may suffer some variations depending on the manufacturer, as the Technical Regulation of Identity and Quality of the product does not establish the time allocated to each processing step. The determination of volatile organic compounds (VOC) can reveal characteristic substances of the food and possible quality markers. The application of solid-phase microextraction in the headspace, in series with gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (HS/SPME-GC/MS), allowed the detection of 103 VOC, among acids, ketones, aldehydes, amines, alcohols, hydrocarbons, ethers, esters and others. Acetic, butanoic and pentanoic acids were identified and associated with the characterization of the JB product, having already been correlated in previous studies to deterioration in fresh meat. Compounds possibly from the migration of plastic packagings, such as caprolactam and oxalic acid, were observed in the analyzed samples.