Exploring relationships between juiciness perception, food and bolus properties of plant-based meat analogue and beef patties

Plant-based meat analogues (PBMAs) often lack sensory juiciness, limiting their consumer appeal. This study aimed to better understand juiciness and texture perception of plant-based meat analogue and beef patties by linking food and bolus properties to sensory properties. Commercially available PBMA and beef patties were cooked to four core temperatures (60, 70, 80, 90 °C). Juiciness intensity decreased significantly and strongly with increasing core temperature (rank-rating test), so that series of patties covering a broad range of juiciness were obtained from the same raw materials. Rate-All-That-Apply (RATA) profiling revealed that with increasing juiciness intensity PBMA patties were perceived less dry and fattier, whereas beef patties were perceived less dry, less hard, less chewy, and fattier and more tender. Juiciness intensity correlated strongly with the properties and composition of the samples. Juiciness intensity of PBMA and beef patties were correlated negatively with cooking loss and positively with serum release under compression. Serum release under compression determined instrumentally correlated strongly and positively with serum release determined in vivo during mastication. For the PBMA patties, juiciness perception was high when the patties contained more fat, while for the beef patties, juiciness perception was high when the patties contained more water. For both PBMA and beef patties varying largely in juiciness intensity, differences in food and sensory properties did not lead to significantly large differences in oral processing behavior and bolus properties at the moment of swallowing. Due to these limited variations in bolus properties, also no meaningful relationships between bolus properties at the moment of swallowing and sensory properties could be determined. We conclude that juiciness perception of plant-based meat analogue and beef patties is primarily determined by the release of serum during mastication, and is related to the sample properties rather than bolus properties at the moment of swallowing.