Analysis of sensory and texture properties of three potato cultivars boiled to different thermal center temperatures

Potatoes Solanum tuberosum, L are among the most consumed crop type by millions of people around the world. It has high amount of starch content and it is known to be a good source of potassium, vitamin B6, vitamin C and fiber. There are more than 4000 varieties of potatoes. Salome, Ditta and Asterix cultivars are among well-known potatoes in the Swedish market. In recent years the consumption of potatoes is shifting from fresh potatoes to processed potatoes. The texture of potatoes is one of the important quality parameter in consumer’s choice. Sensory quality of a potato combined with Instrumental texture analysis is an effective method to determine the quality of the potato. In this study Salome, Ditta and Asterix cultivars were cooked to 95.0 °C and 96.0 °C temperatures by steam cooking and conventional cooking method where the potatoes are placed in a boiling water. Sensory, ash, dry matter and textural analysis was performed. The cultivar difference on Salome, Ditta and Asterix has caused on the quality of the cooked potatoes to be evaluated differently. The cooking method and temperature has affected the sensory quality of the potatoes. The dry matter and the ash content of all potatoes has no significant difference between Salome, Ditta and Asterix cultivars. It can be concluded that Salome potatoes cooked by steam cooking to 95.0 °C for 30.0 minutes has the impression of better quality in terms of hardness, mealiness and total appearance than Ditta and Asterix cultivars. The sensory evaluation of the potatoes gives a very distinguished result among the independent treatments while some of the instrumental texture analysis results are not. For further studies, it is recommended to have samples of the potatoes collected and treated uniformly starting from the harvesting time as well as with the different set up of the texture analyzer.The study of the quality of different potato varieties cooked to different cooking temperatures and cooking methods. The quality of cooked potatoes is affected by the maturity, fertilizers, seasonal climate and physical conditions of the soil, handling and storage conditions. During processing of potatoes, it is important to have the information cooking at what temperature and time combination could give a better quality potato. It is also important to remember that factors mentioned above and the cooking method could affect the final product. How the texture behaves when a potato is cooked is vital criteria for consumer’s choice. It is common practice to divide potatoes in the supermarket either mealy or non-mealy potatoes. The texture of a potato varies during thermal processing due to the breakdown of the cementing cellular martial. There is a lack of satisfying information at what temperature that a potato should be cooked to have satisfying cooking quality for the purpose of further processing, research and development or for day-to-day consumption. This study answers this problem based on the results found by studying Salome, Ditta and Asterix potato varieties that are cooked to varying temperatures and cooking methods. Combining instrumental measurements and sensory quality investigation methods are the recommended way of assessing a certain quality aspects of a food product. In this study ash content, total dry matter content, instrumental texture profile analysis and sensory attributes of the cooked potatoes was measured. Instrumental texture profile analysis is a method of measuring a texture of a product by application of a mechanical compression force. It is usually applied on a food product and it can be related to the sensory attributes detected by human beings. The sensory analysis attributes used are hardness, mealiness, wateriness, mouth feeling and total appearance. These sensory attributes are examined and associated with the Instrumental texture profile analysis results. The breakdown of the results found from the instrumental and sensory investigation methods provides the information to a number of applicable questions. It provides the information at what temperature that a potato is recommended to be cooked to have good cooking quality, which potato variety have better cooking quality and how the ash content, as well as dry matter contents affect the quality of the potatoes. This work can be used also to have insight of the relation between the instrumental measurements and the sensory measurements