An analysis of the non-volatile reaction products of aqueous Maillard model systems at pH 5, using reversed-phase HPLC with diode-array detection

An HPLC-diode array detection (HPLC-DAD) method was developed for the direct analysis of reaction products of aqueous Maillard model systems. The method was applied to mixtures of xylose or glucose refluxed with glycine or lysine for up to 120 min with the pH maintained at 5 throughout heating. Four types of chromatographic behaviour were apparent, ie unretained peaks, resolved peaks and two broad bands. Glycine systems were dominated by unretained peaks while systems based on lysine showed all four types of behaviour. By reference to HPLC-DAD data for standard compounds, some of the resolved peaks were tentatively attributed to pyrrole-like and furanone-like compounds.