Soy Sauce

Note Profile

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About

Soy sauce smells of fermentation and browning at the same time. A caramel-like sweetness sits over a cooked-potato savoury note, with smoke, a rose-like floral lift and a malty edge. No single part of it is loud. The Wikipedia entry is explicit that the product 'does not present a strong aroma' and that the smell comes from a critical balance of many odorants held at low concentration, which is why it reads as complex and savoury rather than as one identifiable thing.

Scent Profile

Soy Sauce smells like fermentation and browning happening together, complex rather than any one clear thing. A caramel-like sweetness sits over a cooked-potato, sulphurous savouriness. A faint smoky, phenolic note runs through it, and a surprising rose-like floral lift shows up alongside. A malty, nutty edge rounds it out, with nothing in the mix loud enough to dominate.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~6h lasting

Family Sweet & Gourmand, Elemental, Woody & Earthy

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

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Materials That Can Make This Note

Perfumers can build Soy Sauce from materials such as:

3-(methylthio)propionaldehyde onion · creamy · musty
Furaneol strawberry · caramellic · pineapple

Smell words come from published sources.

A given perfume with this note may use some of these, or something else.

Origin

A fermented condiment of soybeans, wheat, salt and a koji mould, Aspergillus oryzae. The mould breaks grain protein into free amino acids and starch into simple sugars, then a 90 to 180 day brine ferment and a final pasteurisation build the aroma. The caramel-like furanones (4-HDMF, 4-HEMF and the related sotolon family) come from Maillard browning. 2-phenylethanol, the rose-like alcohol, is made by yeast. Methional comes from Strecker degradation of methionine during both fermentation and pasteurisation.

Usage in Perfumery

A savoury gourmand accent, used in trace amounts. It appears in 3 Fragrantica perfumes and nothing in the other vocabulary, so it is a specialist term. Its job is to make a sweet or woody composition read as fermented and umami rather than as dessert. It pairs with sesame, rice, smoke and dried fruit.