To research characteristic aroma compounds of Ningxia Tan mutton, the volatile compounds in the mutton was extracted by headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME), and analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and gas chromatography-olfactometry (GC-O). The optimum pre-extraction conditions for mutton samples were determined as 75 μm CAR/PDMS, 60 ℃ and 30min. Totally 43 volatile flavor compounds were then identified by GC-MS and GC-O, including 5 hydrocarbons, 12 aldehydes, 5 ketones, 6 alcohols, 6 acids, 7 ester and 2 cyclo-compounds. Among these volatile flavor compounds, hexanal, heptanal, hexanoic acid-ethyl ester, nonanal, 1-nonanol and tetradecanoic acid made a greater contribution to the flavor of Ningxia Tan mutton.