Optimization of the Sensory Properties of Frozen Peas by Principal Components Analysis and Multiple Regression

Abstract

The objective of the study was to develop a sensory description of frozen peas and to explore the relationship between the descriptive attributes and consumer acceptance of peas. A trained sensory panel indicated that 15 descriptive sensory attributes could be used to describe and quantify differences in the sensory perception of frozen peas. These descriptive attributes were off-aroma, size, shrivelling, uniformity of colour, green, yellow, brightness, sweetness, saltiness, strength of pea-flavour, strength of off-flavour, skin-toughness, hardness, juiciness and mealiness. Principal components analysis indicated that these 15 descriptive attributes could be reduced to five uncorrelated sensory dimensions which could be used in multiple regression. The dimensions were interpreted to represent the sensory properties of texture, flavour, colour, appearance and off-aroma flavour. The relationship between consumer acceptance and the reduced set of sensory dimensions indicated that a model for predicting consumer sensory acceptance from sensory data can be achieved and that dimensions of texture and flavour were the most important dimensions to optimize consumer sensory acceptance of frozen peas.