Effect of salt pretreatment, chitosan, and storage period on the sensory acceptability of peda, fermented sardine (Sardinella sp.)

Abstract

Peda is one of Indonesian traditional salt fermented whole fish products. Diverse method of making peda resulted in varying quality of the fermented peda. This study aimed to evaluate the descriptive sensory acceptability of sardine peda during storage as affected by various ways of adding salt in the fermentation of peda, and chitosan addition. Factorial Randomized Block Design (RBD) with 3 factors and 2 replications was used. The first factor was the pretreatment, i.e. time of salt addition (P) which consists of P0 = salt was added directly to the fish, P1 = salt was added after soaking fish in water for 6 hours, and P2 = salt was added after leaving fish at room temperature for 6 hours. The second factor was addition of chitosan (K), consists of K1 = no chitosan added, and K2 = 2% chitosan. The third factor was peda storage period at room temperature (S), consists of S1 = 0 months, S2 = 2 months, and S3 = 4 months. The sensory attributes i.e. color, aroma, and taste of the resulted peda was monitored by trained panelist using descriptive sensory test with 5 scale. The results show that P1 treatment with a storage period of up to 2 months (S2) produced the best aroma and taste with the highest descriptive value of 4.3 (= strong) and a relatively high color value of 3.7 (= neutral to bright). The next best treatment was P0 and finally P2. The addition of chitosan did not notably affect the color value, but caused a lower taste value, and a higher aroma value. All peda treatments generally still have neutral color, aroma, and taste (= 3) up to a storage time of 4 months.