Flavour, Firmness and Composition of Chilled Strawberries - an Interlaboratory Study

Fresh strawberries are a premium product to most consumers and many authors (including 1-7) have reported the results of tests aimed at extending the shelf life of fresh strawberries by chilling, packaging, modified atmosphere packaging, or irradiation or by combinations of some of these techniques. While most of these give an extension of shelf life and a product of good appearance, loss of aroma or the development of off flavours (3) may be a problem; the loss of strawberry volatiles during storage for 96 hours has been clearly demonstrated by Ahmed and Scott (8). It was decided, therefore, to carry out an interlaboratory study using single sample hedonic tasting (week 1) and paired comparison tasting (week 2) to assess loss of flavour in strawberries during chill storage. The soluble solids and ascorbic acid contents, the titratable acidity, and the shear values for samples of the fruit were also measured. This study was carried out as part of the European COST (Co-operation in Science and Technology) 91 bis Sub Group 3 Programme on chilling, chill storage and chilled distribution of foods.