Postharvest processing plays a decisive role in determining the sensory quality, aroma profile, and commercial consistency of Gastrodia elata Blume as a food and functional agricultural product. However, the lack of objective quality markers and rapid authentication strategies limits process standardization and quality control of processed Gastrodia elata products. This study developed an integrated, process-oriented quality evaluation strategy by combining electronic eye and electronic tongue analyses, headspace solid-phase microextraction coupled with gas chromatography–mass spectrometry for volatile profiling, molecular docking, and machine learning. Six traditionally processed Gastrodia elata samples were analyzed to clarify how processing conditions affected color attributes, taste responses, volatile composition, and overall quality differentiation. The results showed that heat input, water involvement, and tissue form were the key processing factors driving quality variation among samples. Among the evaluated treatments, steaming followed by slicing and drying produced the most favorable aroma modification, characterized by reduced cresol-related off-odor and enhanced sweet, fruity, and roasted aroma notes. Differential volatile analysis identified m-cresol, 2-acetylpyrrole, vanillin, and γ-undecalactone as key markers for processing discrimination and aroma quality evaluation. Pathway enrichment suggested that aminobenzoate degradation, butanoate metabolism, furfural degradation, and caprolactam degradation were associated with processing-induced changes in volatile composition, while molecular docking provided supplementary evidence for the potential olfactory relevance of the marker compounds. Furthermore, random forest–selected multisource features enabled robust discrimination of differently processed samples, and the whale optimization algorithm–optimized convolutional neural network–long short-term memory model achieved high classification performance. Overall, this study shows that volatile marker profiling integrated with electronic sensing and machine learning offers an effective, rapid strategy for process authentication, aroma quality control, and quality evaluation of processed Gastrodia elata products. These findings provide practical guidance for improving the standardization and industrial processing quality of Gastrodia elata–based food products.
