The interview-administered 24 h dietary recall (24-HDR) EPIC-Soft® has a series of controls to guarantee the quality of dietary data across countries. These comprise all steps that are part of fieldwork preparation, data collection and data management; however, a complete characterisation of these quality controls is still lacking. The present paper describes in detail the quality controls applied in EPIC-Soft, which are, to a large extent, built on the basis of the EPIC-Soft error model and are present in three phases: (1) before, (2) during and (3) after the 24-HDR interviews. Quality controls for consistency and harmonisation are implemented before the interviews while preparing the seventy databases constituting an EPIC-Soft version (e.g. pre-defined and coded foods and recipes). During the interviews, EPIC-Soft uses a cognitive approach by helping the respondent to recall the dietary intake information in a stepwise manner and includes controls for consistency (e.g. probing questions) as well as for completeness of the collected data (e.g. system calculation for some unknown amounts). After the interviews, a series of controls can be applied by dietitians and data managers to further guarantee data quality. For example, the interview-specific ‘note files’ that were created to track any problems or missing information during the interviews can be checked to clarify the information initially provided. Overall, the quality controls employed in the EPIC-Soft methodology are not always perceivable, but prove to be of assistance for its overall standardisation and possibly for the accuracy of the collected data.

Introduction. During maturation, vanillin is accumulated in green vanilla beans as glucovanillin; it is hydrolyzed to free vanillin by endogenous glucosidases during curing and gives the characteristic flavor of vanilla. The objective of our study was to investigate methods of curing that could greatly reduce the time to complete the process and yield cured beans that retain high concentrations of vanillin and other flavor compounds with high sensory quality rating. Materials and methods. Mature green beans were obtained from a commercial grower (Cairns, Queensland, Australia). One batch of beans was continuously sweated at 35 °C at high relative humidity (RH) for 12 d. Two further batches were blanched in water at 67 °C for 3 min, and then sweated at 45 °C at high RH for 4 d or at 35 °C for 5 d. The beans were sweated until they turned brown. Three methods of drying were evaluated: a heat pump dryer at 40 °C and RH 15%, tunnel dryer at 60 °C and RH 20%, and tunnel dryer at 60 °C and RH 10%. Vanillin was extracted from powdered samples of beans with n-pentane and dichloromethane (1:1 v/v) and assayed by HPLC. Glucovanillin was measured as total vanillin after acid hydrolysis of powdered samples of beans. Results and discussion. About 90% of the glucovanillin was converted to vanillin in non-blanched beans continuously sweated at 35 °C, but there was only 70% conversion in beans blanched at 67 °C for 3 min and sweated at 45 °C for 4 d or at 35 °C for 5 d. The sensory quality of cured beans was assessed by untrained panelists. Profiling showed that the beans sweated continuously at 35 °C had superior aroma compared with beans blanched in hot water and sweated at 45 °C or at 35 °C but the appearance of non-blanched beans was less attractive. Conclusion. The study revealed that a mild hot water blanching treatment followed by sweating at 35–45 °C and rapid drying is required to produce cured beans with excellent appearance and attractive aroma.