Starbuck Coffee Company was one of the first companies to create pumpkin spice flavored coffee. This creation helped to inspire many other companies and brands to create their own pumpkin spice products. As a result, pumpkin spice is seen in many forms beyond spice, and is found as a flavoring for coffee, cookies, candles, and even personal hygiene products like deodorant. The common spices that are found in pumpkin spice were identified as cinnamon, clove, ginger, and allspice. Of those spices, trans-cinnamaldehyde is a good chemical indicator of the amount of cinnamon used and eugenol is a good indicator of clove. Using HPLC, calibration plots were created to quantify the concentration of trans-cinnamaldehyde and eugenol as function of average peak area. Several brands of pumpkin spice (Frontier, Happy Belly, McCormick, and Simply Organic) were analyzed to determine the amounts of trans-cinnamaldehyde and eugenol. In addition, several pumpkin spice flavored coffees (Starbucks, Eight O’Clock, and Green Mountain) were analyzed to determine if trans-cinnamaldehyde and eugenol were present. Majority of the samples were found to contain trans-cinnamaldehyde and eugenol, with the exceptions of Starbucks Coffee and Frontier spice.

Analysis of trans-cinnamaldehyde and eugenol in pumpkin spice products

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