Texture evaluation and control of commercially available strawberry jam based on physical properties

Abstract

We examined whether the findings of previous studies modeling strawberry jam could be applied to commercially available strawberry jam. The texture attributes (hardness, thickness, smoothness, melting and coating) of 10 commercial jam samples were investigated by sensory evaluation. This was conducted by 16 panelists who were trained in evaluating sensory attributes. The short back extrusion (SBE) method was used for instrumental analysis. In the SBE method, the apparent viscosity was calculated using the measurement conditions and shear rate corresponding to each of the texture attributes obtained in previous studies. Furthermore, the correlation coefficient between each sensory evaluation value and the apparent viscosity was determined. The findings showed that a knowledge of any of the sensory attributes of model strawberry jam can be applied to commercially available strawberry jam. These results suggest that the texture of strawberry jam can be controlled by using the apparent viscosity as an index.