Textural measurements and product quality of restructured sweetpotato french fries

The objectives of this research were to investigate the applicability, of using an alginate-calcium gelling system to produce a French fry-type product using high beta-carotene sweetpotato puree as the main ingredient and to Compare four instrumental methods of texture measurement for this product type in relation to Sensory textural properties. Sweetpotato puree made with Jewel cultivar sweetpotatoes was restructured using optimized alginate-calcium concentrations. A consumer panel scored sweetpotato fries containing 0.35 g alginate/100 g and 0.5 g CaSO4/100 g highest for appearance, texture, flavor, and overall acceptability. A trained texture profile panel described the product with 15 texture notes. Of these attributes, nine sensory notes describing hardness, mastication shear, cohesiveness, springiness, moistness, and oiliness were highly correlated with some instrumental parameters (r=0.79-0.92) for measuring textural properties. The instrumental methods evaluated were instrumental texture profile analysis, three-point bending force, Kramer shear force, and puncture force. Among these instrumental methods, Kramer shear appeared to be the method of choice because of methods simplicity and high precision (coefficient of variation less than or equal to 10'%). (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.