Glucosinolates and polyphenols of colored Cauliflower as chemical discriminants based on cooking procedures

Abstract

The impact of mild oven treatments (steaming or sous vide) and boiling at 10 min, 25 min, or 40 min on health-promoting phytochemicals of orange and violet cauliflower (Brassica oleracea L. var. botrytis) was investigated. For this purpose, targeted ultra-high performance liquid chro-matography-high resolution mass spectrometry analysis of phenolics and glycosylates com-bined with chemometrics was employed. Regardless of cooking time, clear differentiation of cooked samples obtained using different procedures was achieved, thus demonstrating the dis-tinct impact of cooking approaches on sample phytochemical profile (both, compound distribu-tion and content). The main responsible components for the observed discrimination were de-rivatives of hydroxycinnamic acid and kaempferol, organic acids, indolic and aromatic glucos-inolates, with glucosativin that was found, for the first time, as discriminant chemical descriptor in colored cauliflower submitted to steaming and sous-vide. The obtained findings also high-lighted a strict relationship between the impact of the cooking technique used and the type of cauliflower. The boiling process significantly affected phytochemicals in violet cauliflowers whereas orange cauliflower boiled samples were grouped between raw and either steamed or sous-vide cooked samples. Finally, the results confirm that the proposed methodology is capa-ble of discriminating cauliflower samples based on their phytochemical profiles and of identi-fying the cooking procedure able to preserve bioactive constituents.