Dairy cream response in instrumental texture evaluation processed by multivariate analysis

The purpose of the present work is to highlight potentiality of chemometric interpretation of consolidated instrumental food texture evaluations. In this study, back-extrusion tests were carried out on industrial-made whipped dairy creams. Mechanical profiles were obtained from 0 up to 49 storage days and were analyzed by considering the signal as a whole using basic chemometrics tools. In order to obtain the maximum content of information related to the mechanical properties of the dairy cream samples, the texture information carried on by mechanical profiles were quantified in terms of Principal Component Analysis. A threshold in whipped creams shelf-life was identified in terms of overall textural attributes and was equal to around 28 and 35 storage days, where a relevant variation of the mechanical properties was observed. Multivariate classification furnished objective and quantitative criteria for the shelf life mapping of the product, based on mechanical signals. Multivariate statistical analysis proved to be able to handle large datasets produced by a consolidated analytical technique and consequently appeared as a promising tool for studying the entire mechanical profiles.