No chemical can bring out the same taste as seawater. The smell you smell at the seaside and the smell of seafood you eat are made up of different molecules. The following three kinds of odors are most commonly spread in the ocean by marine life through mating, death, fish food and other activities.
Dimethyl sulfur-the smell of the coast
Dimethyl sulfur (DMS) is one of the most common and easily understood marine flavor components along the coast. Food scientists use various descriptions to describe the taste of DMS, such as green, sulfured, wet and cold, boiled cabbage and cream corn. The smell of this smelly sulfur-containing compound exists in many foods, from seaweed to truffles and beer, and it is abundant in your fart.
In the ocean, DMS is mainly produced by some bacteria that feed on phytoplankton. Phytoplankton is a microorganism that generates energy by absorbing sunlight. They use DMSP as sunscreen to protect themselves. After death, all DMSP will be released, and DMS will be produced after being eaten and digested by bacteria. Seabirds and other marine life also rely on the smell of DMS to determine where there are more phytoplankton, because many delicious fish tend to gather in those places.
If you want to have a clear understanding of the taste of DMS, go to the salt marsh! There is a smell of sulfide, one of which is DMS. In addition to salt marshes, local cheese-making places are also good places to let you know the taste of DMS. Microorganisms such as Brevibacterium and Geotrichum can produce very high concentrations of DMS when decomposing cheese protein.
Reticulene in brown algae-mating smell of kelp
Love liquid has a taste, and seaweed is no exception. In the 1960s and 1970s, scientists analyzed the parts of seaweed with strong beach flavor and identified the compounds. When they began to discover the effects of these compounds on algae, they found that the eggs of algae contained a lot of these volatile compounds, and the sperm of algae were easily attracted. Although there are all kinds of algae in the ocean, these unique smells can still accurately attract the same kind and make these algae peaceful.
Brown algae estrogen is one of their dispersed sex hormones, aromatic amine, and also a component of the odor of edible algae (kelp). I (the original author) have never smelled the pure brown algae estrogen, but many research reports point out that it tastes the same as dried seaweed. Limu lipoa (a kind of seaweed, Phaeophyta Obscens) is very common in Hawaii, and it is rich in fucoidan estrogen, which is used for stewing meat and brings strong marine flavor to dishes.
Bromophenol-Food for Fish
A large part of the salty taste of wild seafood (including fish, shellfish, oysters, clams, shrimps and crabs) comes from bromophenol. At low concentrations, these chemicals are described as having the taste of seawater, crabs and fish. When the concentration is high, you will smell a pungent chemical smell, similar to iodine.
Biologists who study seafood believe that most of these marine organisms do not produce this compound by themselves, because the food they eat is especially marine worms, algae and other marine organisms at the bottom of the food chain. Wild caught seafood often contains a higher concentration of this bromophenol, which is more "seafood" than cultured seafood. In the adaptation process of some fish (such as Pacific salmon) from seawater to fresh water, it is found that the concentration of bromophenol is extremely high when fishing in the ocean, but it is almost gone after being put into fresh water.
In order to recreate the "seafood" of cultured fish, some fishing grounds deliberately add bromophenol to fish food, and the result can only be said to be mixed. One of the risks of this practice is how to control the dosage, so that it gives off a faint sea smell instead of a pungent iodine smell. You can easily take a fish out of the sea, but it is difficult to inject the taste of seawater into them.