Sensory profiling of plantain-lima bean Momo (A Nigerian food pudding) using chemometric approach

Plantain and lima beans are important food crops with food nutrition security potentials in Nigeria. Plantain-lima bean momo is a nutrient-enriched pudding produced from unripe plantain and lima beans. The study aimed at evaluating the sensory profile of the plantain -lima bean momo to drive its consumers’ acceptability. Plantain and lima beans flour blends of various ratios were processed into momo. The momo samples were presented to panelists for sensory evaluation. Scores were based on nine point hedonic scale. Data obtained were subjected to Principal component and Agglomerative hierarchical clustering analysis. Results show that the addition of more than 20% of lima beans negatively affected the colour, appearance, flavour, texture and taste of the plantain-lima bean momo. PP (100% plantain flour momo) had the strongest positive correlation with appearance and texture. PA (90% unripe plantain flour + 10 % lima bean flour momo) was preferred mostly of all the momo samples in terms of overall acceptability. The principal component analysis (PCA) divided the sensory parameters of the momo samples into five factors with PC1 and PC2 accounting for 96.68% of the variance. Agglomerative hierarchical clustering (AHC) showed that PA and PP have similarities in all the sensory properties evaluated and that addition of 10% and 20% of lima beans to plantain flour did not have negative effect on the sensory characteristics of the product. Lima bean flour could be added to plantain flour up to 20% level for enhancement of momo nutritional quality, while still retaining its organoleptic qualities.