Abstract:In order to explore the impact of pH and temperature on the temporal sweetness profile of eight different sweeteners (sucrose, fructose syrup, maltitol, sorbitol, oligofructose, steviol glycoside 00, steviol glycoside 07 and steviol glycoside 14), this study first determined the concentration of the other seven sweeteners that had equivalent sweetness as 5 g/dL sucrose under neutral conditions at room temperature through paired comparison test, magnitude estimation method and single factor variance analysis. Further, the time-intensity method was used to describe the temporal sweetness profile of eight sweeteners under three conditions including room-temperature-neutral (pH 7.0, 25 ℃), room-temperature-acidic (pH 4.5, 25 ℃) and low-temperature-neutral (pH 7.0, 4 ℃). It was found that both acidity and low temperature could decrease the maximum sweetness intensity for most of the samples. Acidic conditions had a significantly higher reduction effect on fructose syrup and steviol glycoside samples than low-temperature conditions, while low-temperature conditions had a more significant reduction effect on sugar alcohols, sucrose and oligofructose. In addition, the overall sweetness duration of each sample was also inhibited and shortened under acidic and low-temperature conditions, with a more significant impact from low-temperature conditions. Therefore, acidic or low-temperature conditions could both inhibit the sweetness release intensity or release time of different sweeteners, but to varying degrees. Overall, in terms of temporal sweetness profile and change trends under the three conditions, the closest performance to sucrose was sorbitol, followed by fructose syrup and oligofructose.
