Sensory perception of creaminess and its relationship with food structure

Practical difficulties are frequently encountered in understanding the meaning of creaminess as used as a sensory attribute, and in the compositional and physical characteristics of foods that give rise to creaminess. Selected factors have been investigated in this project. The size of dispersed particles (solid, liquid and gaseous) on the perceived creaminess was of particular interest during the course of the work, and this was varied using appropriate changes in processing, during production of samples for analysis. Additional factors investigated included the presence of an added cream flavour in artificial creams, fat content in artificial creams and air content in chocolate mousses. Sensory characterisation of samples was carried out using sensory profiling, while physical characterisation of the samples was by means of particle size measurements, microscopy and theology. The results show that perceived creaminess is a complex attribute in multi-phase food systems, being dependent on both flavour and textural characteristics of products, with different dependencies on these characteristics, depending on the product type concerned. The project demonstrated the value of manipulating processing and formulation variables as a means of generating a range of food structures for the investigation of creaminess. It is evident, however, that the concept of creaminess might differ between different structural types, limiting opportunities for devising general rules governing the factors controlling creaminess. Further studies should focus on specific structural types that are open to manipulation, and further research is in progress to investigate systematic changes to a mousse structure. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.