Sensory Characteristics of Purple-fleshed Sweet Potato Jam with Varying Sugar Contents

Abstract

Natural food colorant are widely used to satisfy consumer preferences. Anthocyanins are red, blue and purple natural pigments. Purple-fleshed sweet potato (PSP) contains large quantities of anthocyanins. The aims of this work were i) to investigate the influence of sugars on the purple color of PSP jam and ii) to optimize the ratio of ingredients for sensory characteristics of PSP jam. Korean PSP variety “Sinjami” was used for the preparation of jam. The jams were prepared with various sugar contents (0, 20, 30, 40 and 50% total weight) consisting of steamed purple-fleshed sweet potato, water, lemon juice and apple juice. With increasing sugar contents, lightness (L) and redness (a) of PSP jams decreased while yellowness (b) increased, indicating that anthocyanins were degraded and/or brown pigments were formed due to high sugar content under heat treatment. Hardness, springiness, chewiness and cohesiveness showed significant differences among PSP jams with various sugar contents. In sensory evaluation, addition of sugar significantly increased scores for color and texture as compared to control samples. The color, texture and preference results indicate an optimal sugar content of 40% total ingredient weight for PSP jam.