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By Ole Mouritsen and Klavs Styrbæk
Published 2014
The most important contributor to umami in fish sauces is glutamate. The content of free glutamate can be very great, close to 1,400 mg per 100 g in Japanese ishiri and the Vietnamese nuoc mam tom cha, or a little more than in soy sauce. Usually, the salt content is also very high, all the way up to 25 percent, which is quite a bit more than the 14–18 percent found in soy sauce. The combination of umami and salt works synergistically to enhance the saltiness of fish sauce.