The Precursors and Flavor Constituents of the Cooked Oyster Flavor

In order to elucidate a mechanism responsible for the development of the odor characteristics of cooked, desirable-flavored shellfish, oysters were extracted using various solvents and the resulting extracts were evaluated organoleptically after cooking. The 80% aqueous methanol extract was found to produce a desirable cooked flavor. This oyster extract was fractionated using ion-exchange column chromatography and dialysis, and each of the fractions was subjected to cooking, followed by organoleptic evaluation. The outer dialysate fraction such as acidic and amphoteric water-soluble fractions produced a cooked oyster flavor. The volatile flavor compounds identified from cooked oyster included 29 hydrocarbons, 20 alcohols, 16 acids, 12 aldehydes, nine nitrogen-containing aromatic compounds, eight ketones, five furans, three esters, three phenols, and one benzene.