Flavoromics of meats as a function of postmortem proteolysis

The present review has mainly focused on the mechanism of postmortem biochemical and metabolic changes as the key metabolic pathways that determine flavor formation. Flavor omics combines flavor fingerprinting with chemometrics. To better understand the underlying mechanisms involved in reactions between the volatiles or flavor precursors and how different metabolites may form via postmortem glycolysis, proteolysis, and lipolysis which provide meat flavor. Post-mortem chiller and/or dry aging techniques lead to endogenous enzymes breaking down large molecular proteins, lipids, nucleotides, and carbohydrates into smaller fragments, resulting in flavor precursors, including small peptides, free amino acids, free sugars, nucleotides, and nucleotide-bound sugars that contribute to meat flavor. The flavor chemistry is very complex and depends on the interaction between volatile (aroma) and non-volatile (taste) compounds. Flavor analysis can vary from sensory-based approaches to methods using advanced analytical instrumentation. Several methods have been implemented to define flavor chemistry or meat flavoromics, with GC–MS and HPLC being employed to detect both volatile and nonvolatile compounds. The use of instrumental sensory devices such as e-noses, e-tongues, nuclear magnetic resonance, spectrometry, etc. has been growing. However, more research is needed in the direction of meat flavor omics.