Dynamic interaction of sweet and sour taste perceptions based on sucrose and citric acid

Abstract

Given the significance of dynamic taste perception, this study focused on sucrose and citric acid as research subjects to investigate quantitative principles governing the dynamic interactive responses between sweet and sour taste perception. Time-intensity experiments (30 assessors) revealed a logarithmic correlation between Imax, AUC, and concentration, indicating that the sweetness of 2-10% sucrose and sourness of 0.006-0.024% citric acid exhibited mutual inhibition. Temporal dominance of sensations study (30 assessors) reveals that during the initial stage, the predominant attributes are sweetness and sourness, while in the later stage, salivation emerged as the dominant attribute across varying ratios of sweet-dominant, sour-dominant, and balanced sweet-sour sensations. At various sweet-to-sour ratios, dynamic liking (30 assessors) evaluation determined the optimal acceptance ratio of sweet-to-sour and elucidated the influential attributes of perceived preference along with their operational principles. The aforementioned research findings on the dynamic sweet-sour taste interaction patterns hold substantial implications for informing practical applications in the food industry.