Análise sensorial de queijos com adição da flor Clitoriaternatea

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate the sensory attributes and purchase intention of fresh and aged cheese with the addition of Clitoria ternatea flower. Four formulations were developed: control cheese (CQ), cheese marinated in flower infusion (QMC), cheese with flower infusion in the dough (QCM) and cheese marinated and added with C. ternatea flower infusion in the dough (QMCM). The formulations were tested by 59 untrained tasters, using a completely randomized design with a 2x4 factorial, considering two types of cheese (fresh and aged) and four forms of flower addition (CQ, QMC, QCM and QMCM). It was observed that the interaction between the type of cheese and the inclusion of C. ternatea flower had significant effects on the attributes of appearance and color (P<.0001), overall evaluation (P=0.0330) and purchase intention (P=0.0127), indicating that these combined factors influence consumer perception. Despite this, the sensory attributes did not show significant differences according to the type of cheese (P>0.05). However, the form of inclusion of the flower significantly influenced attributes such as appearance (P<.0001), color (P<.0001), texture (P=0.0024), flavor (P=0.0024), overall evaluation (P=0.0001) and purchase intention (P<.0001). It was observed that the overall evaluations and purchase intention had a reduction in the scores for the QMCM cheese. The analysis of the principal components revealed that the first principal component (CP1) explained approximately 56.62% of the total variation of the data, being strongly influenced by the attributes flavor (0.862), overall evaluation (0.848) and purchase intention (0.783). The second principal component (CP2) explained 14.5% of the variation and was strongly associated with appearance (0.906) and color (0.904). The results indicate that the method of inclusion of the Clitoria ternatea flower plays a determining role in the sensory perception and purchase intention of consumers. Although the type of cheese did not significantly affect the sensory attributes, specific combinations of flower addition techniques directly impacted the overall acceptance of the product.