Maillard reaction products as markers of the durum wheat pasta manufacturing process. A commodity investigation

In the present work, three volatile Maillard reaction products (maltol, furfuryl alcohol, and furfural) were considered for their supposed ability to act as process markers of dry durum wheat pasta. Hence, a commodity investigation was performed on Made in Italy pasta products and the HS-SPME/GC-MS technique was adopted to detect the target compounds in sixty samples. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to evaluate whether the relative abundance of the flavour compounds can differentiate pasta samples processed through mild technologies (traditional methods) from that submitted to intense thermal stress during their elaboration (industrial methods). Results showed that the analysed products were efficiently discriminated according to their claimed manufacturing method by maltol, furfuryl alcohol, and furfural, which thus can serve as reliable pasta process indicators.