Quantitation of volatile oils in ground cumin by supercritical fluid extraction and gas chromatography with flame ionization detection.

Ground cumin is used as a flavoring agent in a number of ethnic cuisines. The chemical entities, which primarily establish its characteristically pungent flavor, are found in the volatile oil of cumin. Fixed oils and carbohydrates tend to round out the harshness of the volatile oil components. However, the quantity of volatile oil is commonly the measure of the quality of this spice. For several decades, the spice industry has used a classical distillation procedure for the determination of volatile oil in cumin and other spices. However, the method is cumbersome and requires nearly 8 h to complete. Supercritical fluid extraction with capillary gas chromatography-flame ionization detection is utilized in the formulation of a rapid, accurate, and specific method for the determination of volatile oil in ground cumin. Samples are extracted in a static-dynamic mode with CO2 at 550 bar and 100 degrees C. Toluene is used as a static modifier addition. The extracted volatile oil, collected in toluene, is analyzed directly using tetradecane as the internal standard. Integration is performed as grouped peaks to include all chemical entities found in cumin volatile oil recovered from the official distillation procedure. Results from this procedure compare favorably with those obtained by the official procedure (coefficient of correlation = 0.995, 24 samples).