Abstract
One of the most popular food produced by extrusion process are the snacks. The quality of this product is related to sensory factors such as appearance and taste, with emphasis on texture. However, it is very difficult to find studies with correlations between descriptive and instrumental analyses for texture. The objective of this study was to perform extruded snacks instrumental and sensory analysis, crossing the obtained data and enabling correlations between them. Corn snacks were extruded on equal parameters in a complete IMBRA RX50 extrusion line (INBRAMAQ, Ribeirão Preto SP, Brazil), and then, the snacks were divided into four treatments modifying the moisture contents. These four treatments were also flavoured and stored for later physical analysis of moisture, water solubility, water absorption, water activity, colour, expansion ratio, specific volume, apparent density, retraction index and texture, the last one both instrumental and sensorial. Sensorial evaluation was performed by hedonic scale with 112 panellists, evaluating snacks texture, flavour and overall appearance. The snacks were analysed in Texture Analyzer TAXT2 Plus, using five different probes and varying the test speeds. Through the obtained results, it was possible to accomplish an excellent correlation between the data since the R values found varied between -0.91 and -0.99. Conclusively, the instrumental tests can replace sensory evaluation for texture attribute in extruded snacks.
