かまぼこの足について-XI

足の評価

抄録

Kamaboko is a food something like sausage made of fish meat. The so-called “ashi”, overall rheological properties of this food, has been regarded as the most important quality factor.
The present paper deals with the kinesthetic components of “ashi” which kamaboko gives those who eat it, such as “softness”, “toughness” and “shortness and crispness” and shows how closely they will affect our preference of “ashi”.
(1) The “shortness and crispness” which may be associated with our feelings in cutting a kamaboko off with teeth, and the “toughness” affect our evaluation of the quality of “ashi”, while the “softness” has little or nothing to do with the quality.
(2) The stretching-test has been developed for the purpose of an objective evaluation of the “toughness” of kamaboko. Scores for the “toughness” evaluated by the organoleptic tests correspond to values of the gel-strength which we have defined as the product of the tensile strength (g) and the maximum elongation (cm) of a strip of kamaboko.