Sensory Properties of Thai Fish Sauces and Their Categorization

Sensory characteristics of Thai fish sauces is one of the most important factors of consumer perception. This study aims to characterize sensory properties of Thai fish sauces, and to categorize Thai fish sauces based on the sensory properties. Twenty samples composing of 12 commercial Thai fish sauces (P) and 8 commercial Thai mixed fish sauces (M) were collected. Generic descriptive quantitative analysis with twelve trained panelists was used to determine and compare the sensory characteristics of samples. The results showed that there were fifteen sensory descriptors which were brown color, five aromatics (sweet, caramelized, fermented, fishy, and musty), four tastes (sweet, salty, bitter, and umami), and five aftertastes (sweet aftertaste, salty aftertaste, bitter aftertaste, caramelized flavor, and fishy flavor). P samples had significant difference in all of sensory characteristics from M samples (p<0.05). In addition, principal component analysis (PCA) could reduce those sensory attributes into two independent principal components, which accounted for 55.14% of the total variance, and could categorize samples into four groups. The first principal component (PC1) separated samples into two groups which high and low degree of fishy aromatic, fishy flavor, sweet aftertaste, caramelized flavor and umami taste. The second PC also separated samples from PC1 in another two groups which high and low degree of caramelized aromatic, sweet taste, sweet aromatic, salty taste, salty aftertaste, musty aromatic and fermented aromatic.