ABSTRACT
Sector 56, HSIIDC Industrial Estate, Kundli, Haryana, India. 3 Dr. SS Bhatnagar University Institute of Chemical Engineering & Technology, Panjab
University, Chandigarh 160014, India. * Corresponding author
Food quality is adjudged by four principal factors comprising (i) appearance, (ii) fl avour, (iii) texture, and (iv) nutrition. The fi rst three are termed as ‘sensory acceptability factors’ because they are perceived by the senses directly. Nutritional quality is not perceived by the senses. The quality factor ‘texture’ is defi ned as all the mechanical (geometrical and surface) attributes of a food product perceptible by means of mechanical, tactile and, where appropriate, visual and auditory receptors (ISO 5492 2008). Texture is also defi ned as human physiological-psychological perception of a number of rheological and other properties of foods and their interactions (McCarthy 1987). According to Bourne, the textural properties of a food are the “group of physical characteristics that arise from the structural elements of the food that are sensed by the feeling of touch, are related to the deformation, disintegration, and fl ow of the food under a force, and are measured objectively by functions of mass, time, and distance” (Bourne 1982). The terms texture, rheology, consistency, and viscosity are often used interchangeably, despite the fact that they describe properties that are somewhat different. In practice the term texture is used primarily with reference to solid or semi-solid foods rather than liquids.
