Consumer Acceptability of Cucumber Pickles Produced by Fermentation in Calcium Chloride Brine for Reduced Environmental Impact

摘要

Fermentation of cucumbers in calcium chloride (CaCl_2) brine has been proposed as an alternative process to reduce the environmental impact of traditional, high salt fermentations. The objective of this research was to determine whether consumer acceptability of pickle products would be impacted by fermentation and storage of cucumbers in CaCl_2 brine. Cucumbers were fermented and stored with 0.1M CaCl_2 or 1M sodium chloride (NaCl) in open-air, 3000 gal tanks at a commercial facility and processed into hamburger dill chips containing 0.38M NaCl. Cucumbers fermented in CaCl_2 required additional desalting to reduce CaCl_2 concentrations to that of current products. Consumers (n = 101) showed no significant preference for pickles from different fermentation treatments, whether stored for 2 mo (P = 0.75) or 8 mo (P = 0.68) prior to processing. In contrast, NaCl fermented pickles were preferred over CaCl_2 fermented pickles stored for 10 mo and desalted only once (P ＜ 0.01). A series of preference tests indicated that the taste of CaCl_2 was not the factor affecting consumer preference, and the 50% detection threshold of CaCl_2 in dill pickle chips was found to be 61.8 ± 7.6 mM, indicating that processors could potentially use CaCl_2 fermentations with a single desalting step. Consumer liking of flavor (n = 73) was not influenced by fermentation in CaCl_2 or by 23 or 35 mM CaCl_2 in finished products (P ＞ 0.05), but variability in texture decreased consumer liking (P ＜ 0.05). Although promising, individual fermentation variability and texture quality of CaCl_2 fermented products should be further evaluated prior to broad implementation of this process.