Cereal Chem. 71:330-337   |  VIEW ARTICLE


Instrumental Probe and Method to Measure Stickiness of Cooked Spaghetti and Noodles.

F. Guan and P. A. Seib. Copyright 1994 by the American Association of Cereal Chemists, Inc. 

A multifaced probe, a sample-restraining device, and a sample holder were built to measure stickiness on a single cooked strand of spaghetti or noodle. The probe and sample-restraining device were attached to a commercial texture analyzer. Stickiness measurements, requiring 1.5 cm of undisturbed length along a strand, were made at one of 14 positions along a strand. Cooked strands were mounted on the sample holder, and the stickiness measurements were made at intervals of up to 150 min as the strands aged under ambient conditions (23-25 C and 50-74% rh). The probe was used to compress a strand to 100 g-force, then the probe was retracted and the tensile portion of the force-time (distance) curve was captured and stored, all in less than 1 min. The peak tensile force and the total tensile work required to separate the probe from a strand were used to measure stickiness. Both parameters increased and then decreased as a cooked strand was aged under ambient conditions. Throughout the aging period, spaghetti and noodles made from a hard white winter wheat flour were stickier than those made from a durum wheat flour; a maximum difference occurred after 70 min of aging. Within the variation of relative humidity in our laboratory, the peak tensile force observed upon aging the cooked spaghetti and noodle strands under ambient conditions was reproduced with a 5.1-6.0% coefficient of variation. The coefficient of variation for tensile work was 8.8- 13.0%.