Vitamin C and organic acid contents in Spanish oGazpachoo soup related to the vegetables used for its elaboration process Contenidos de vitamina C y acidos organicos en Gazpacho y en las hortalizas usadas en su elaboracion

The contents of vitamin C (ascorbic and dehydroascorbic acids) and other organic acids such as citric, oxalic, fumaric, malic and glutamic, were determined by HPLC in 54 samples of tomato, white onion, cucumber, pepper, garlic, and ogazpachoo elaborated using the previous vegetables. Tomato and garlic had the highest amounts of organic acids, while cucumber presented the lowest content. Citric and glutamic acids presented the highest mean concentrations. The bulb vegetables presented higher concentrations of glutamic and citric acids than the fruit vegetables. Pepper was the vegetable with the highest content of vitamin C, followed by tomato and ogazpachoo. Mean value of ascorbic acid/dehydroascorbic acid ratio varied between 0.29 and 2.53 for cucumber and tomato, respectively. oGazpachoo samples had a lower ascorbic acid/dehydroascorbic acid ratio than the vegetables used in its elaboration, which suggests that some amount of ascorbic acid may be enzymatically oxidized to dehydroascorbic during the elaboration.