RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SENSORY CRISPNESS AND OTHER SENSORY AND INSTRUMENTAL PARAMETERS1

ABSTRACT Twenty subjects judged the crispness, loudness, and firmness of sixteen food samples by both biting and chewing and by only biting the foods. These subjects also scored the foods for thirteen textural qualities. Instrumental measures of slope, peak force, and deformation to fracture were obtained for the sixteen foods from a snap test at four deformation rates. Whether a subject judged an attribute by the bite or the bite and chew technique made little or no difference in the sensory judgments. Crispness appeared to be very closely related to loudness and less closely related to firmness. Loudness of the chewing sounds was more closely related to crispness than to firmness. Of the sensory qualities studied, loud, snap, and crackly were the three most closely related to crispness. Of the instrumental parameters Young's Modulus generally had the highest correlation with the crispness of all foods and peak force generally had the highest correlation with firmness. Deformation rate had minimal effects on measures of flexure or peak force, but its effects on Young's Modulus were frequently large and irregular. A vibrotactile‐acoustical hypothesis for crispness is proposed.