Analysis of Umami Taste Compounds in a Fermented Corn Sauce by Means of Sensory-Guided Fractionation

Abstract

Corn sauce, an ingredient obtained from the fermentation of enzymatically hydrolyzed corn starch and used in culinary applications to provide savory taste, was investigated in this study. The links between its sensory properties and taste compounds were assessed using a combination of analytical and sensory approaches. The analyses revealed that glutamic acid, sodium chloride, and acetic acid were the most abundant compounds, but they could not explain entirely the savory taste. The addition of other compounds, found at subthreshold concentrations (alanine, glutamyl peptides, and one Amadori compound), contributed partly to close the sensory gap between the re-engineered sample and the original product. Further chemical breakdown, by a sensory-guided fractionation approach, led to the isolation of two fractions with taste-modulating effects. Analyses by mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance showed that the fractions contained glutamyl peptides, pyroglutamic acid, glutamic acid, valine, N-formyl-glutamic acid, and N-acetyl-glutamine.

Chemical and Sensory Characteristics of Soy Sauce: A Review

“…Most importantly, these approaches are now being combined with sensory experiments which deliver the flavor perception of the individual compounds detected and how these correlate with specific attributes. These sensory techniques are mainly based on sensory-driven fractionations, dilution analyses, receptor-based assays, cell-based assays, olfactometry, and electronic nose and tongue. − For soy sauce, very few opportunities have been taken to exploit metabolomics approaches for the analysis either regarding soy sauce flavor or in the development of new high-throughput methods for soy sauce production. Such research would help us generate a clearer picture of sensory-relevant compound precursors and their fate during the processing steps toward the final product.…”

Purification and identification of kokumi‐enhancing peptides from chicken protein hydrolysate

“…During the past two decades, taste-active molecules such as umami-and kokumi-enhancing oligopeptides in cheese, beans, beef broth, and yeast extract have been identified (Ottinger & Hofmann, 2003;Dunkel et al, 2007;Toelstede et al, 2009;Liu et al, 2015). In addition, dipeptides containing c-glutamyl have been identified as the key kokumi compounds in fermented corn sauce (Charve et al, 2018). Onion extract has the properties of kokumi, and it is speculated that the peptide responsible contains sulphydryl groups that make the tongue produce a sense of convergence and induce a strong stimulus signal (Ueda et al, 1994).…”

Identification of Non-Volatile Compounds Generated during Storage That Impact Flavor Stability of Ready-to-Drink Coffee

“…However, these approaches can overlook the effects of contextual interactions and flavor modulators. In recent years, an untargeted flavor approach named flavoromics has been applied to understand the chemical drivers of flavor properties in complex food matrices [ 24 , 25 , 26 ]. Flavoromics combines comprehensive chemical profiling with statistical analysis to establish correlations between chemical components and sensory responses [ 27 ].…”