The great scientist Robert Hooke, after from Hookean solids are named, explained the principle of elastic deformation of solids, and Isaac Newton, who founded the law governing the flow of simple liquids (Newtonian fluids), may be included in the founding of texture studies.
According to Professor Ronald Jowitt in 1974, texture is the attribute of a substance resulting from a combination of physical properties and perceived by the senses of touch, sight, and hearing. Physical properties may include size, shape, number, nature, and conformation of constituent structural elements.
Sensory assessments such as crispness, chewiness and toughness are complex processes occurring within the mouth involving interactions between the teeth, tongue, cheeks, auditory signals, saliva and the food material (eg Heath’s work) under complex states of deformation.
The tactile sense (touch) is the primary method for sensing texture but kinesthetics (sense of movement and position) and sometimes sight (degree of slump, rate of flow), and sound (associated with crisp, crunchy and crackly textures) are also used to evaluate texture.
The perceived crispness of vegetables depends mainly on their cellular arrangement, intercellular adhesion and turgor pressure within the cells. Fruit and vegetables are complex cellular structures. X-ray microscopy and scanning electron microscopy show that apple flesh is composed of columns of cells radiating from the core.
Texture is assessed by subjective sensory evaluations based on psychophysics and by objective instrumental measurements based on physics and/or chemistry. Texture and related physical properties can be evaluated by instruments that measure rheology, fracture, and acoustics as well as by microscope and spectrometers.
Food texture
