Effect of drying methods on Thai dried chilli’s hotness and pungent odour characteristics and consumer liking

Dried chilli is widely used for its hotness and pungent odour enhancing properties. In an attempt to get a broad overview of drying effects on hotness and pungent odour characteristics contributing to dominant features of various types of Thai dried chilli, major volatile flavour compounds responsible for perceived hotness and pungent odour of the dried chilli-(freeze(FD), hot air (HD) and sun (SD) dried samples) were identified by trained panel (n=15) in conjunction with HS-SPME/GC-MS and LLE/GC-MS. Consumer liking of the three dried chilli was assessed on the basis of pungent odour and hotness characteristics by Thai consumers (n=120) using 9 point–category hedonic scale. The GC-MS and trained panel data were analyzed by PLS and results show that capsaicin was the main compound responsible for the oral hotness sensation, while 1-penten-3-one compound was found to be an indicator of strong pungent odour. The FD sample presented the highest intensity of hotness characteristic(p≤0.05). The content of 1-penten-3-one in FD was also higher than that of HD and SD. Although trained panellists could not differentiate between the intensities of pungent odour of FD and HD (p>0.05), consumers had a tendency to prefer HD. This research proposes that there is substantial value to analysis such as this that integrates human sensorial perception with objective measurement. The outputs of this research can be used to provide guidance on dried chilli product development based on consumer acceptance criteria

LINKAGE BETWEEN AN ADAPTED FREE CHOICE PROFILING (FCP) METHOD AND INSTRUMENTAL ANALYSIS BASED ON A THAI CHILLI PASTE PRODUCT

Abstract Free Choice Profiling (FCP) was applied to measure consumer perception on attribute intensities of Thai chilli paste products. The FCP was adapted to include a 'standardized' session which was conducted in order to give panelists an idea of reference standards and their intensities on six key attributes related to product ingredients. After five chilli paste samples (including one repeated) were evaluated, GPA was applied, and revealed that judgments from 10 out of 14 panelists were reliable. The sensory consensus data from FCP was then linked to instrumental measurement data, such as water activity (a w ), moisture content, salt content, capsaicin content, acidity, pH, L*,a*, b*, stickiness and adhesiveness (measured by texture analyzer) and volatile compounds (detected by dynamic headspace sampling technique (DHS) with GC-MS). PCA and PLS graphs demonstrate that colour and brightness of the products were key attributes affecting product acceptance, and appear to be related to presence of ethanol and linalool. Hot sensation presents strong correlation with saltiness perceived by consumers and % salt content whereas acidity seems to be correlated with product texture