Coffee Flavor Chemistry
by
Ivon Flament

Short description
During the past 150 years, organic chemists have attempted to solve the mystery of roasted coffee flavor and only recently uncovered its secrets. This book provides a complete analytical and synthetic survey of the chemistry of coffee flavor constituents. It explores how these compounds form during roasting, what structure they have, how they contribute to the smell and taste of the beverage, and who identified them.

The back cover comments:

For two centuries investigators have tried with varying degrees of success to identify the compounds which give roasted coffee its characteristic aroma and taste. The analytical methods and the state of progress in chemistry at the end of the 19th century did not allow for the separation, isolation and identification of the multitude of trace chemicals which are present in roasted coffee. By 1900, scarcely a dozen compounds had been identified. Since the beginning of the sixties, with the advent of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, the number of identifications has increased tremendously. To date, 850 compounds have been identified in the flavor of roasted coffee and 300 in the smell of green coffee.

In this work, the authors systematically review the non-volatile constituents of green coffee, including their structure, and discuss their important contribution as flavor precursors during the roasting process. They also trace the chronological discovery of the individual chemicals and critically examine the validity of their identification, highlighting the enormous progress which has been realized during the twentieth century and particularly in the last 40 years. For convenience, the constituents of green and roasted coffee have been distributed into chemical classes according to structure, systematic and empirical names, their CAS Registry Numbers and occasionally their FEMA classification. Comments are given on the origin or the formation during roasting of each individual compound.

Coffee Flavor Chemistry:

• Contains an up-to-date list of almost 1400 original literature references;
• Is the first book to provide a comprehensive overview of coffee flavor chemistry;
• Critically discusses all of the identified and confirmed compounds in coffee;
• Presents the major part of the book as a catalogue, for the benefit of the reader;
• Includes information on structures, systematic and empirical names, identification, mechanism of formation, synthesis, detection thresholds and organoleptic properties of each constituent where available;
• Devotes a chapter to the flavor precursors, including the names and structures of the compounds with reference to the corresponding analytical work.

It will be an invaluable reference for scientists - including analytical chemists and flavorists - in coffee companies, food industries, essential oils and flavor companies, pharmaceutical laboratories, food technology institutes, international and governmental regulation authorities and quality control laboratories.

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