Flavor fidelity and variation of freshly stir-fried and commercial ready-to-heat Yuxiang shredded pork using integrated sensory and volatile profiling

Flavor fidelity of commercial ready-to-heat Yuxiang shredded pork (YSP) relative to freshly stir-fried YSP remains insufficiently characterized, particularly across products with heterogeneous formulations and processing histories. A standardized freshly stir-fried YSP was therefore used as a reference to benchmark five commercial frozen ready-to-heat products after standardized reheating using sensory evaluation, electronic nose, electronic tongue, free amino acid profiling, headspace-gas chromatography-ion mobility spectrometry (HS-GC-IMS) and headspace-solid-phase microextraction gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (HS-SPME-GC-MS) combined with chemometric and odor activity value (OAV) analyses. HS-GC-IMS and HS-SPME-GC-MS identified 81 and 158 volatile organic compounds, respectively. Orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) prioritized 25 discriminatory HS-GC-IMS features, while OAV analysis screened 51 potentially odor-active GC-MS compounds. The freshly stir-fried reference showed stronger terpene- and Allium-related signals, including methanethiol, diallyl sulfide, diallyl disulphide, neral, geraniol, and 2-ethyl-3,5-dimethylpyrazine. In contrast, the pooled commercial group showed higher levels of hexanal, (E)-2-nonenal, (E,E)-2,4-decadienal, eucalyptol, caryophyllene, phenylethyl alcohol, and ethyl benzoate, reflecting greater contributions from oxidation-, heat-, and seasoning-associated volatiles. Cross-platform correlation analysis further revealed coordinated product-level variation among these volatile modules. These findings provide a market-relevant flavor benchmark for screening candidate aroma markers and prioritizing formulation and processing targets to improve flavor fidelity in ready-to-heat Sichuan dishes.