Flavor impartment of mushroom on egg whites and sensory properties of egg whites with mushroom topping using quantitative descriptive analysis

Abstract BACKGROUND Mushroom possesses desirable aroma, taste, texture, health‐promoting and disease‐preventing dietary components, making it an ideal ingredient, especially for animal‐based food substitution. Nevertheless, no study has replaced egg whites partially with mushrooms and investigated their sensory quality. This study aimed to investigate flavor impartment of mushroom on egg whites and the sensory quality of roasting and steaming egg whites replaced by white and crimini mushrooms at 0%, 10%, 20% and 30%, respectively, using a panel trained with aroma chemical references for 31 sensory attributes with 0–10 line scales. RESULTS Roasted and steamed egg whites possessed major sensory attributes of sulfury and egg‐like aroma and flavor (intensities > 3). After mushroom topping was added, the dominant sensory attributes shifted to mushroom‐based flavor characteristics, including mushroom‐like, earthy, dark meat, roasted, hay, soybean, potato, woody, umami, bitter, astringent and firmness texture. Mushroom variety showed significant ( P ≤ 0.05) impacts on egg white sensory quality, with crimini introducing more intense flavor. The higher the mushroom proportion with egg whites, the more intense was the flavor associated with mushroom. Mushroom could enhance egg‐like flavor in multiple dimensions, including aroma, taste and texture, according to partial least square regression. CONCLUSION White and crimini mushrooms enriched roasted and steamed egg white sensory quality with introduction of characteristic sensory attributes from mushrooms. Mushroom variety and proportion with egg whites displayed significant impacts on egg white sensory properties. The study contributed to understanding the impact of mushrooms on egg white sensory profile and served as a guide in incorporating mushroom in product development. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry.