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Extraction and analysis of free amino acids and 5′-nucleotides, the key contributors to the umami taste of seaweed

  • Year of publication 2021
  • Author(s)
    Tanja Moerdijk-Poortvliet Dylan de Jong Roy Fremouw Sandra de Reu José de Winter Klaas Timmermans Geert Mol Norbert Reuter Goverdina Derksen

Summary

Assessing the umami taste of seaweed on a chemical level can inform the use and selection of seaweed in European cuisine. Accordingly, we developed a method for the simultaneous extraction, separate clean-up and analysis of 21 free amino acids and 10 free nucleotides by reversed phase and mixed-mode HPLC respectively. Of multiple mouth emulating solvents, extracting in Milli-Q at 35 ◦C was found most suitable. This method showed good linearity (R2 > 0.9996), resolution (Rs ≥ 1.5) and picomole detection limits, and was successfully applied to determine the Equivalent Umami Concentration (EUC) and Taste Activity Values (TAV) of seven Dutch seaweed species. Phaeophyceae showed the highest EUC, followed by Chlorophyceae and Rhodophyceae (≈ 9.5, 3.7 and 1.1 g/100 g respectively). Glutamic acid always exceeded the TAV, while other umami compounds were species specific. Our method can accurately predict umami intensity and therefore contributes towards species selection for the European palette.

Documents

Moerdijk (2022) Extraction Analysis of FAAs and FN as contributors to seaweed umami