A comparison of two instrumental techniques used to discriminate the cooking quality of spaghetti

Pasta is a popular food whose quality can be measured by appearance, flavour and texture. Several instruments have been devised to measure texture but there is little comparative information. This study compared the TA.XT2i texture analyser with the viscoelastograph of thirty spaghetti samples. There was a high correlation between these instruments and good agreement in ranks. While both instruments provide comparable data it is not the same. Two laboratories used the texture analyser to measure cooked spaghetti firmness using their own procedures. There was good agreement in firmness, however; there were differences in the ranks for samples that fell between the extremes in firmness. We attributed these differences to variations in the instrument settings, cooking method and sample presentation used by the laboratories indicating the need to standardise the method. Using a standard method greatly improved the correspondence between the laboratories improving the r2 to 0.99 with excellent agreement in the ranking of ten samples. © 2008 Institute of Food Science and Technology Trust Fund.