Dispersive solid-phase extraction and dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction for the determination of flavor enhancers in ready-to-eat seafood by HPLC-PDA

The dispersion solid-phase microextraction (DSPE) combined with dispersion liquid–liquid microextraction (DLLME) was developed as a rapid, simple and effective pretreatment method for the determination of flavor enhancers (maltol, ethyl maltol, vanillin, methyl vanillin, ethyl vanillin) of ready-to-eat seafood products (dried squid, baked squid, fried fish, steamed abalone). Under the optimized DSPE–DLLME method, the developed method exhibited low limits of quantitation (0.20–0.50 μg g −1 ) and excellent linearity (R 2  ≥ 0.995). The recoveries of flavor enhancers in the actual samples were 83.7%–114.9%. Compared with traditional pretreatment methods, the developed DSPE–DLLME method was rapid (17 min) and easy to determine the flavor enhancers by high performance liquid chromatography with photodiode array detector (HPLC-PDA). In the actual samples, creamy compounds such as vanillin, methyl vanillin and ethyl vanillin were hardly found. However, the flavor compounds produced by thermal reactions such as maltol (except for dried squid 3) and ethyl maltol were present in all samples.