SOME EXPERIENCES WITH THE GENERAL FOODS TEXTUROMETER

As part of a programme of investigation into the effects of processing on the texture of food the General Foods Texturometer was adopted, because it appeared to offer versatility, multiple-property determination and a fair degree of objectivity. Preliminary investigations with the instrument indicated a high degree of reproducibility when used on a 'recoverable' material (rubber). The results are highly dependent on the dimensions of the sample and reproducibility decreases somewhat with increasing hardness of material under test. The 'representativeness' of the results for a range of food materials varied widely, being influenced by the uniformity of the material and the accuracy with which samples can be prepared. Experiments to correlate the results from this instrument with those from the Instron Universal Testing Machine, the Kramer Shear Press and a subjective panel method indicate that the Texturometer 'hardness' might prove the most useful measure of the firmness/hardness of foods as judged subjectively. None of the other textural properties measured by the Texturometer in this work proved of value in indicating subjective textural characteristics and further study of such properties is currently in progress.