Aroma profiles and potential odour-active compounds in Thai fish sauce produced from anchovies caught from three different coastal regions in Thailand

Thai fish sauces produced from anchovies caught from three different coastal regions of Thailand [the western (WT), eastern (ET), and southern (ST)] had similar overall sensory aroma profiles with strong fishy and meaty odours followed by sweet, cheesy, sour and musty odours. The 3 fish sauces differed in the intensity levels of these 6 attributes. Fish sauce odourants were extracted by solvent extraction followed by solvent-assisted flavor evaporation (SAFE) and analyzed by gas chromatography-olfactometry (GC-O). Odour-active compounds of three fish sauces were analyzed using aroma extract dilution analysis (AEDA) with flavor dilution (FD) factor ≥1024. There were 18 potential odour-active compounds which exhibited FD factor ≥128 in at least one of the studied fish sauces. Differences in the FD factors of these odourants between each fish sauce were found. These results suggested that anchovies caught from different regions contributed to the different sensory profiles of the fish sauces.