Correlation between nutrient composition and key flavor compounds in chicken soup: Insights from different chicken sources.

Chicken soup is a traditional meat-based dish whose quality is determined by the interplay between nutrient composition and volatile flavor compounds. Volatile profiling revealed aldehydes, including n-Hexanal, (E,E)-2,4-nonenal, and n-Octanal, as the dominant contributors to its characteristic flavor. Nutritional evaluation showed that chicken soup contained high levels of protein, essential amino acids, and lipids, with clear differences in lipid contents among breeds. In detail, protein was the predominant nutrient, and fractions of approximately 100 kDa and 35 kDa exhibited high hydrolysis efficiency during in vitro gastrointestinal digestion, indicating favorable digestibility. Essential amino acids, such as lysine, leucine, and valine, were present at relatively high levels. While free amino acids showed greater regional variability. Correlation analysis demonstrated that protein, lipids, and essential amino acids were positively associated with the generation of flavor-active aldehydes, whereas moisture and free amino acids were negatively associated. These findings were validated using electronic nose, electronic tongue, and headspace gas chromatography-ion mobility spectrometry (HS-GC-IMS), confirming the consistency of nutritional-flavor relationships across chicken breeds. Collectively, these results clarify that the mechanistic relationship between nutrient composition and volatile formation, and they also provide a basis for optimising the nutritional design and sensory quality of chicken soup.