Determination of suitable palate cleanser for spicy tom yum soup

Abstract

Palate cleansers are required in sensory tests as they help improve the accuracy for sensory responses especially for foods containing strong flavour. The objective of this study is to determine a suitable palate cleanser that can be used to relief spiciness in a Thai dish, tom yum soup. The untrained judges rated the spiciness of three levels of spicy tom yum soups before and after using five palate cleanser strategies, water, bread, unsweetened milk, 10 percent sucrose and nothing. One palate cleanser strategy was used per session, thus the judges performed a total of five sessions. All of the palate cleanser strategies have shown to exhibit the ability to relief spiciness of the tom yum soups where milk was most effective Thus, using milk as a palate cleanser strategy follow by a water rinse is considered to be one of the appropriate palate cleanser choices for spicy soup.