Studies On The Sensory Characteristics Of Dried Bean Curd

The dried bean curd is one of the most important traditional foods in China, mainly due to its taste and nutrition value and consumed by whole nation. But there are few reports or research to deal with its sensory characteristics of dried bean curd at present. With the material of dried bean curd bought from market, the sensory characteristics were studied aiming to construct sensory quality system, and to find out the key factors influencing consumers' acceptability in this paper.(1) Combined the sensory characteristics given by assessors in every test, deleted hedonic terms and quantitative terms, summarized the characteristics reflected homology character. Then held the characteristics which appeared more than 50%, constructed sensory descriptive system of dried bean curd, including colour, dry or wet on the surface (DWS), rigidity, emplastic and elasticity (EE), conglobation, chew times, particle sense, bean's fragrance, oil flavor, beany flavor, salty.(2)The result of the relativities between sensory characteristics of dried bean curd and consumer's acceptance shows that colour, rigidity, EE and chew times all highly correlated with consumer's acceptance.(3)The principal component analysis was performed on the sensory characteristics of dried bean curd. The DWS, oil flavor, beany flavor and rigidity show highest influence on the sensory attribute of dried bean curd, which can describe 22.18% of the total variance. The next is chew times, particle sense and salty.(4)The results of the relativities among sensory characteristics, texture profile analysis (TPA), chemical characteristics and consumer's acceptance shows that content of moisture, content of protein, hardness, chewiness, rigidity, chew times and EE all highly correlated with consumer's acceptance. The content of moisture positive correlates with EE, but has a negatively correlation with chew times, hardness and chewiness. (5)The principal component analysis was performed on the sensory characteristics, TPA parameters and chemical characteristics of dried bean curd. PC₁ includes 39.25% of the variance in the data set and the highest contribution comes from hardness, chewiness, springiness, EE, the content of moisture, conglobation, chew times and rigidity. PC₂ describes 21.43% of the total variance and the highest contribution is oil flavor, DWS and cohesiveness. PC₃ (10.59% of total variance) is described by particle sense, resilience and the content of protein. PC₄ spanning 8.52% contains the highest contribution of particle sense and resilience. The PC₅ (4.87% of the total variance) is described by fracturability. Together, these five PCs account for almost 84.71% of the total variance in the data set.(6)Combined (4) and (5), the content of moisture, hardness, chewiness, conglobation, rigidity, chew times and DWS can be used to identify the sensory quality of dried bean curd.(7)The hardness, chewiness and cohesiveness can be used to quickly checking the sensory character of dried bean curd in production.