## 3 Results and Discussion
### Analysis of Total Antioxidant Capacity
To note the different behaviour of antioxidant capacity and TPC on a dry basis, as for the antioxidant capacity the S1 value is lower than for the cooked _softrios_. This can be because antioxidant capacity does not depend only on the polyphenol content but also on other species such as carotenoids, tocopherols, phytosterols, metals, etc. [29]. Some of these compounds are not water soluble. In addition, the formation of Maillard products due to heating processing may also modify some of the species responsible for the antioxidant properties. Figure 1: Total phenol content (TPC) of all the sample analyzed expressed in mg gallic acid 100 g\({}^{-1}\) dried sample (DS). Different superscripts indicate statistically significant different values (\(p<0.05\)). raw _softrio_ 1 (S1); cooked _softrio_ 1–6 (CS1–6). Regarding the antioxidant capacity of specific _sofrito_ samples (Figure 2), the higher antioxidant activity content evaluated was obtained again for CS4, which contains 1 g of rosmary. Adding aromatic herbs, such as thyme and rosmary increased significantly the antioxidant capacity as reported in Figure 2 in relation to S1. This is a logical result as these ingredients are very rich in polyphenols and other antioxidants as mentioned below [30; 31]. Additionally, the elimination of an important ingredient such as onion in CS6 also affected the antioxidant capacity. In this case, its higher value compared to CS1 must be related to the higher proportion in the recipe of carotenoids, vitamin E and vitamin C from tomatoes as onion lacks those vitamins (Base de datos Espanola de composicion de alimentos, BEDCA database) [32]. Additionally, an improvement in the bioaccessibility of Z-carotenoids when tomato is cooked with olive oil has also been documented before [2]. Furthermore, the addition of a double quantity of cooked garlic in CS2 led to a significantly higher value of antioxidant capacity compared to CS1. This difference could be attributed to the presence of the ajoene and vinyldithiins compounds, which present quite elevated TPC values [33]. These results showed the same tendency among the three methods assayed giving a suitable correlation among them. The significant differences were calculated applying one-way ANOVA. Different letters in Figure 2 show significant differences at \(p<0.05\). In relation to the cooked _sofrito_ samples, the values obtained in this work were similar to those obtained in baked and fried tomatoes by other authors [34] and higher in comparison with some commercial ones [35]. The differences could be attributed to the use of seed oil instead of extra virgin olive oil, the cooking temperature, and the rough processing technologies such as sterilization used in the commercial preparation of _sofrito_ samples as it has been reported previously by other authors [35]. Figure 2: Antioxidant capacity calculated with ferric-reducing antioxidant power (FRAP), diammonium salt (ABTS) and 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) methods for all the samples analyzed expressed in \(\upmu\)mol equivalents of TROLOX 100 g\({}^{-1}\) dried (DS) or wet sample (WS). raw _sofrito_ 1 (S1); cooked _sofrito_ 1–6 (CS1–6). Different superscripts in the results of the same method indicate statistically significant different values (\(p<0.05\)). In conclusion, the TPC in all the cooked samples showed a slightly lower value than in the raw sample in relation to dry matter. As the yield factor was around 0.50-0.56 some phenols must have been destroyed during the processing of the _sofrito_ as observed somewhere else [16]. On the contrary, the other three antioxidant capacity methods showed higher values in cooked samples than in the raw one. This is due to the presence of antioxidant species different to polyphenols like carotenes, and metals, that resist better the cooking process.