Recently special attention has been devoted to the characterisation of aroma profiles of soy sauce, which led to the conclusion that fermentation technology could significantly contribute to diverse aromas and odorant of various soy sauce. However, in most cases the speculation lacks
sufficient quantification and sample sizes are inadequate. For example,determined 2-phenylethanol as an important odorant in a model aroma mixture of Japanese soy sauce (which contained 13 volatiles).Contradictorily,did not detect 2-phenylethanol after comparing the key aroma compounds in five different types of Japanese soy sauce. Thus, further research is required to verify quantitatively the roles of these key aroma-active compounds in the overall
aroma of a wide range of commercial soy sauces.