The physical stability and the droplet size distribution of several commercial food proteins and gum arabic stabilized emulsions were determined as a function of oil content and homogenization pressure. The encapsulation properties of several commercial food proteins and gum arabic was also evaluated with conventional analytical procedures and with DHA. The outer and inner structure of spray-dried microcapsules were studied by TEM, SEM and CSLM. SPI emulsified orange oil droplets were most stable and GA emulsified orange oil droplets were least stable against creaming during 10 days storage at room temperature and correlated with TEM results. Light scattering results revealed that SPI was most effective and GA was least effective for producing small sized orange oil emulsion droplets by high pressure homogenization. Statistical analysis showed that there was significant interaction between the independent variables, i.e., encapsulants and % oil load with two dependent variables, i.e., droplet size and depth of cream layer, but no interaction between encapsulant and homogenization pressure at usd\alphausd = 0.05. Spray-dried SC encapsulated particles exhibited the largest sizes and the other encapsulated particles were in decreasing order of WPI > SPI > GA. SEM and CSLM results revealed that the spray dried GA encapsulated particles had experienced more shrinkage than protein encapsulated products during drying. A DHA technique was developed to determine the rate of release of volatiles from spray dried, encapsulated orange oil particles, and it was found that GA had the highest volatile release rate and SPI had the lowest release rate. WPI and SPI encapsulated orange oil products were more stable against oxidation than SC and GA encapsulated orange oil products.