ABSTRACT
This chapter explores briefly the methodology available to study food microstructure and to provide the reader with several divergent examples of how microstructural knowledge may be useful in explaining and predicting food texture. Cooking produces important textural changes in protein-based muscle foods. Scallop microstructure exhibited different changes resulting from cooking. Many species of legume seeds will develop the hard-to-cook defect (i.e., an increase in cooking time required for tenderness) after storage under unfavorable conditions. Cook time of beans is dependent on moisture content and previous storage history including time, temperature, and relative humidity. Cooking of soaked beans produces textural softening; the cause of this change is thought to be the influence of heat in promoting depolymerization of calcium and magnesium salts of pectic substances composing the middle lamella to produce separation of intact cells.
