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plant derivative fruity roasted & savory Vegan Gluten-free Dairy-free Nut-free Kosher Halal
Allergens soy

Soybean Sauce

Soybean Sauce is a plant derivative with 115 known flavor compounds. The most distinctive molecule is niacinamide. It pairs most strongly with sesame, sharing 42 flavor compounds. Soybean Sauce appears in 11,540 recipes, most commonly in chinese cuisine.

Soybean Sauce — ingredient reference image
115
Flavor Compounds
8
Top Pairings of 856 scored

Flavor Science

Flavor Profile Breakdown

115 compounds

How Soybean Sauce's 115 known compounds break down by aroma category. Percentages are of compounds with a known label.

fruity 27 · 23.5%
floral 18 · 15.7%
green 12 · 10.4%
caramel 11 · 9.6%
sour 8 · 7.0%
roasted 6 · 5.2%
dairy 5 · 4.3%
sulfurous 4 · 3.5%
chemical 3 · 2.6%
woody 3 · 2.6%

Most Used In

Flavor Compounds

70 of 115 are distinctive to soybean sauce — they appear in under 10% of foods. The remainder are the background most foods share.

Ordered by measured impact in soybean sauce — concentration against odour threshold where both are published, then by how distinctive the molecule is across the graph. Molecules measured here but not established as odorants sit below those that are.

Molecules volatile enough to reach the nose.

Most Abundant Molecules

7 of 115 quantified

Ranked by median concentration across published studies. Only 7 of Soybean Sauce's 115 compounds have a measured concentration in the literature — the rest are confirmed present but not yet quantified. Bars are log-scaled.

1 methyl acetate 939.8 mg/kg
2 benzaldehyde 4 µg/kg
3 acetic acid 3 µg/kg
5 toluene 0.66 µg/kg
6 2-phenylethanol 0.2 µg/kg
7 methyl palmitate 0.1 µg/kg

Best Pairings for Soybean Sauce

Ranked by how often cooks actually use them together, across 453,403 recipes — the familiar answer first. Each pairing still carries its molecular score and shared-compound count; only the ORDER differs. Counts cover every characterised molecule the two ingredients have in common, not only the aroma-active ones, so they can exceed an ingredient’s aroma-compound count. For the chemistry-first view — where the surprising pairings live — see the molecular network below, the side-by-side comparison, or the Pairing Tool.

Molecular Neighborhood

Soybean Sauce and its 10 closest compound-sharing relatives. Spoke thickness = shared compounds; circle size = that ingredient's own compound count. Drag to rearrange, scroll to zoom, click to open.

Molecular neighborhood diagram of soybean sauce — top 10 ingredients ranked by shared volatile compounds

Recipes with Soybean Sauce

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Research basis

Soybean Sauce is supported by 297 peer-reviewed papers

Drawn from PubMed + Europe PMC + food-science journals. Click any title to read the full abstract on the original source.