As a traditional Chinese condiment, flavor of soy sauce is an important quality indicator, and its functional activity has also attracted people's attention. However, the flavor and functional components of soy sauce are complex, and how to comprehensively analyze the volatile and non-volatile components that possess flavor and functional activities and effectively regulate them have always been the hot spots for condiment industry. According to research reports, there were 202 kinds of aroma-active compounds in soy sauce, which can be divided into sour, alcoholic, malty, floral, fruity, caramel-like, smoky, vegetable-like aromas, etc. according to the type of odor. The combination of different aroma compounds in a certain proportion forms the rich sauce (in Chinese “Jiang”) aroma of soy sauce. There were 230 kinds of non-volatile compounds in soy sauce, which brought comprehensive sense of sourness, sweetness, bitterness, saltiness, umami and kokumi taste to soy sauce. Among them, salty and umami taste were more prominent. The reported physiological functional substances in soy sauce were about 30 kinds, which possessed certain antioxidant, anticancer, antihypertensive, anti-hyperuricemic activities, etc. Overall, the changes, advantages and disadvantages of soy sauce flavor detection technology, its key active substance basis according to aroma characteristics, taste characteristics and functional activity classification were detailedly introduced, and the development direction of technology and theory was reviewed. This study aimed to provide a reference for the high-quality development of soy sauce and traditional fermentation industries.