Method for monitoring cooking in an oven appliance

A method for monitoring cooking in an oven appliance, comprising:

• initiating a gas or vapor analysis cooking cycle of the oven appliance;
• operating a heating element of the oven appliance in order to preheat a cooking chamber of the oven appliance to a selected cooking temperature during the gas or vapor analysis cooking cycle;
• activating a food item placement request with the controller of the oven appliance after the cooking chamber of the oven appliance is preheated to the selected cooking temperature;
• drawing cooking vapors or gases from the cooking chamber to a fluid analysis assembly of the oven appliance after a food item is positioned within the cooking chamber during the gas or vapor analysis cooking cycle;
• opening a control valve of the fluid analysis assembly in order to mix ambient air about the fluid analysis assembly with the cooking vapors or gases from the cooking chamber, the control valve configured for adjusting ambient air flow in response to the food item indication;
• determining a cooking status of the food item within the cooking chamber with the controller of the oven appliance based upon a response pattern of a plurality of fluid sensors of the fluid analysis assembly to the mixture of ambient air and cooking vapors or gases during the gas or vapor analysis cooking cycle;
• exposing the plurality of fluid sensors of the fluid analysis assembly to the mixture of ambient air and cooking vapors or gases, each fluid sensor of the plurality of fluid sensors generating a respective signal during said step of exposing, the respective signal from each fluid sensor of the plurality of fluid sensors corresponding to a different gas, vapor or combination of gases and vapors in the cooking vapors or gases;
• establishing the response pattern of the plurality of fluid sensors with a multivariate machine or statistical learning model at the controller of the oven appliance, the multivariate machine or statistical learning model comprising a linear discriminant analysis model, a partial least squares discriminant analysis model or a support vector machine;
• and
• activating an alert with the controller of the oven appliance when the cooking status of the food item within the cooking chamber is a selected cooking status.