Quantitative studies, taste recombination, and omission experiments on the key taste compounds in Chinese and Japanese soy sauce

The non-volatile compounds in Chinese soy sauce (CSS) and Japanese soy sauce (JSS) were qualitatively and quantitatively identified by amino acid analyser and gas-chromatography mass-spectrometry combined with derivatization method (DER-GC–MS). Forty-nine compounds were identified, including 19 amino acids, 8 sugars, 6 sugar alcohols, 8 organic acids and 8 others. Six groups of taste compounds were added to the water at natural concentration in soy sauce were able to reconstitute taste models of CSS and JSS, with no remarkable differences from the soy sauce taste profiles. Through three different rounds of omission tests, it was clear that the recombination models of 10 and 11 key compounds could simulate the typical taste characteristics of CSS and JSS, respectively, with the shared compounds NaCl, glutamate, lysine, isoleucine, leucine, lactic acid, citric acid, and > 500 Da components. This study provided an important theoretical basis for the in-depth research on the soy sauce flavor.