The seed of Ziziphus jujube Mill. var. spinosa (Bunge) Hu ex H. F. Chou, Suanzaoren in Chinese, is one of commonly used Chinese medicines. Saponins and fatty oil contains several fatty acids in Suanzaoren are responsible for its therapeutic activities. In this study, a new HPLC coupled with evaporative lightscattering detection (ELSD) and pressurized liquid extraction (PLE) method was developed for the simultaneous quantitative determination of I I major components of 2 saponins and 9 fatty acids, namely jujuboside A, jujuboside B, lauric acid, myristic acid, palmitic acid, palmitoleic acid, stearic acid, oleic acid, linoleic acid, arachidic acid and docosanoic acid in Suanzaoren. Simultaneous separation of these eleven compounds was achieved on a C 18 analytical column. The mobile phase consisted of (A) 0.1% aqueous acetic acid and (13) methanol with 0.1% acetic acid using a gradient elution. The drift tube temperature of ELSD was set at 75 degrees C, and nitrogen flow-rate was 1.81/min. All calibration curves showed good linearity ( r(2) > 0.9955) within test ranges. This method showed good reproducibility for the quantification of these eleven components in Suanzaoren with intra- and inter-day variations ofless than 3.41 and 4.37%, respectively. The validated method was successfully applied to quantify I I investigated components in nine commercial samples ofSuanzaoren. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.