Evaluation of a Texture Profile for Cooked Chicken Breast Meat by Principal Component Analysis

During a profiling stage five subjects were asked to describe as completely as possible their textural impressions following the consumption of cooked chicken breast halves. This resulted in a group decision for seven descriptive terms in dutch: hardheid (hardness), samenhangendheid (cohesiveness), elasticiteit (elasticity), droogheid (dryness), vettigheid (fattiness), stroefheid (roughness) and kauwbaarheid (chewiness). Next the subjects were asked to judge these attributes from 66 breast halves (from 33 chickens) on scales from 1 to 7. The chickens were obtained from several sources and cooked by several procedures. For each variable and each chicken a panel score was calculated. These scores were subjected to principal component analysis. Thereby the original data-matrix was reduced to a three dimensional one, which involved a loss of 14.7% of the original variance. The variables hardheid (hardness), samenhangendheid (cohesiveness), elasticiteit (elasticity) and kauwbaarheid (chewiness) loaded high on Factor 1 which was identified as a “Mechanical Factor.” Droogheid (dryness) and stroefheid (roughness) had a high loading on Factor 2, which was named “Fluidity Factor.” Factor 3 was called “Fattiness Factor” because only fattiness loaded high on it. It was concluded that the perceptual structure of cooked chicken breast meat is simpler than was assumed by the subjects and that this structure can rather adequately be described by the three dimensional structure.