Development of Flavor Lexicon for Freshly Pressed and Processed Blueberry Juice

Abstract

AbstractA lexicon with 32 aroma/flavor, taste and mouthfeel attributes was developed for blueberry juice. Twenty blueberry products were used to develop the lexicon. It was tested with frozen blueberries that were thawed and hand‐pressed to make juices (P1, P2 or P3) and bottled juices (B1, B2, B3 or B4). Freshly pressed juices had significantly (P ≤ 0.05) higher scores in blueberry, strawberry, floral, sweet aroma and sweet taste except for processed juice, B4, which was also high in sweet taste. In comparison, the four bottled juices were significantly (P ≤ 0.05) higher in cranberry, molasses/dark corn syrup, canned tomato, fermented, processed berry juice, sour aroma and pungency aroma. In addition, all three hand‐pressed juices plus B4 were significantly lower than B1, B2 and B3 in wine‐like, bitter taste, sour taste, astringent, metallic, tongue numbing and throat burn attributes. Processed blueberry juice had a different flavor profile than freshly pressed juice.Practical ApplicationBlueberry juice offers many health benefits. Blueberry juices are appealing to consumers because of their high antioxidant levels and convenience. This lexicon provides a means to evaluate blueberry juice flavor, whether freshly pressed or processed. These descriptors will facilitate monitoring the changes in flavor during processing and storage and will assist processors to determine the impact of processing methods on product flavor quality. They will also be useful to evaluate breeding and production practices on juice flavor.