Progress report of the AOCS flavor nomenclature and standards committee

Over the past 5 years, 2 collaborative studies have been organized to evaluate the gas liquid chromatographic (GLC) methods for flavor of edible oils. The most recent of these studies compared the results from 5 GLC procedures to the evaluations of the flavor panels of 8 laboratories. While the GLC procedures proved to be more precise than the panels, it was shown that separate correlation equations must be developed for each type of oil, each degree of hydrogenation or blending, and each manner of storage or abuse of the samples. Thus, either a flavor panel must always be available to establish a reference point for any study to be made, or GLC flavor methods must be recognized as providing a direct, but rela‐tive, evaluation for “oil quality.”