Crunchiness

Characteristic of foods

Crunchiness is the sensation of muffled grinding of a foodstuff. Crunchiness differs from crispness in that a crisp item is quickly atomized, while a crunchy one offers sustained, granular resistance to jaw action. While crispness is difficult to maintain, crunchiness is difficult to overcome.

Crunchy foods are associated with freshness, particularly in vegetables.^[1]^[2] In bready foods, crunchiness can instead be associated with staleness. Other foods regularly associated with the sensation include nuts^[3] and sweets.

Relationship to sound

Crispness and crunchiness could each be "assessed on the basis of sound alone, on the basis of oral-tactile clues alone, or on the basis of a combination of auditory and oral-tactile information".^[4] An acoustic frequency of 1.9 kHz seems to mark the threshold between the two sensations, with crunchiness at frequencies below, and crispness at frequencies above.

Look up crunchy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

References

^ Roach, Mary (26 March 2013). "Mary Roach on Studying How Humans Chew and Eat". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 26 March 2013. Retrieved 28 March 2013.
^ Vincent, J. F. V.; Saunders, D. E. J.; Beyts, P. (2002). "The Use of Critical Stress Intensity Factor to Quantify "Hardness" and "Crunchiness" Objectively". Journal of Texture Studies. 33 (2): 149–159. doi:10.1111/j.1745-4603.2002.tb01341.x. ISSN 1745-4603.
^ Saklar, S.; Ungan, S.; Katnas, S. (1999). "Instrumental Crispness and Crunchiness of Roasted Hazelnuts and Correlations with Sensory Assessment". Journal of Food Science. 64 (6): 1015–1019. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2621.1999.tb12271.x. ISSN 1750-3841.
^ Lawless, Harry T.; Heymann, Hildegarde (1999-08-31). Sensory Evaluation of Food: Principles and Practices. Springer. ISBN 9780834217522.