Correlation of Volatile Components of Raw Peanuts With Flavor Score

The direct gas chromatographic procedure for analysis of the volatiles of peanut butter and other food products was applied to raw peanuts. A glass liner packed with ground, raw peanuts was placed in the heated inlet of a gas chromatograph and allowed to remain in place while the volatiles distilled out of the sample onto the head of a cool column. The liner was then removed and temperature programming was begun. Raw, Virginia type peanuts from the 1974 and 1975 harvests were analyzed, and some gas chromatographic data were correlated with flavor scores of the roasted peanuts. Ethanol was the predominant volatile component, and it tended to increase as flavor quality decreased. The correlation coefficients, significant at the 1% level, between the flavor scores and the ratios of ethanol-to-methanol and ethanol-to-total volatiles were −0.87 and −0.88, respectively.