Research Progress of Volatile Substances Analysis and Sensory Evaluation of Soymilk.

Soybean is one of the important crops in China. Soymilk, a traditional neutral plant-based protein drink, is rich in high quality proteins. Although soybean milk is rich in nutrients, its marketing among consumers, especially those in Western countries who are used to peaceful flavor, has been limited due to the adverse flavor impact brought by its special composition. In recent years, with the increasing attention to the nutritional value of soymilk, the flavor of soymilk has become a popular research object for scholars at home and abroad. The flavor components of soymilk are mainly volatile small molecular compounds produced by enzymatic reactions catalyzed by lipoxygenase (LOX). After formation, they interact with protein macromolecules to form the overall flavor of soymilk. At present, there are many methods to control the off-odor of soymilk at home and abroad, including physical heating methods, chemical methods, biological enzymatic digestion methods, mask methods, and a variety of breeding methods. These methods effectively reduce the off-odor of soymilk, but all of them have shortcomings. Currently, the sensory characteristics of the beany odor in soymilk are evaluated mainly by traditional human sensory scoring along with the assistance of modern instrument analysis of volatile flavor substances using headspace solid phase microextraction (SPME) gas chromatography coupled with-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). This paper summarized the research results of volatile flavor substances in soymilk in recent years and the sensory evaluation methods of soymilk at home and abroad, and looked forward to the future development direction, hoping to provide some theoretical bases and reference detection methods for solving the problem of soymilk flavor in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]