DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS AND EXTERNAL PREFERENCE MAPPING OF POWDERED CHOCOLATE MILK

Appearance, texture and flavor descriptors were developed for powdered chocolate milk. The influence of cocoa and gum concentrations on thes e descriptors was studied using step-wise multiple regression. Out of a total of 23 descriptors, four were non-significant. For the signific ant descriptors, the percentage variance explained ranged from 65 to 9 3%, with an average of 82%. Visual viscosity and oral thickness were c orrelated with instrumental viscosity. Principal component analysis sh owed appearance/texture was explained by four principal components, wh ilst aroma/flavor was one-dimensional and depended on cocoa concentrat ion alone. The circular ideal point model was chosen to map consumers on the first two appearance/texture principal components. For aroma/fl avor, consumers were mapped on a single dimension using an ideal point model. For both appearance/texture and aroma/flavor, adults and child ren had similar averages but the ideal points for children were more s pread out on the sample map. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.