The objective of this research was to determine whether frying or boiling and which fish species were preferred by Cambodian consumers. One hundred consumers in Cambodia evaluated striped catfish, striped snakehead, walking catfish, and fermented striped catfish that were either boiled or fried using a 9-point hedonic scale where 1= dislike extremely and 9 = like extremely. Data were analyzed by the GLM procedure of SAS v9.4 with fish species and cooking method as fixed effect and panelist as a random effect.
Consumers preferred fried fish appearance and aroma (P = 0.001) over boiled fish but did not differ in their acceptability ratings for flavor, texture, and overall acceptability of boiled and fried fish (Table 1). In addition, all mean values were between 6.7 and 7.2, indicating that on average, boiled and fried fish were moderately acceptable to consumers. For fish species and preparation method, the appearance and flavor of walking catfish and striped snakehead were preferred (P < 0.05) over striped catfish. Aroma followed a similar pattern, with the exception that consumers also preferred the aroma of fermented striped catfish to that of striped catfish (P < 0.0001). When cooking method, fish species, and preparation were evaluated together, the acceptability of appearance and aroma was liked more for fried walking catfish (7.2) than boiled walking catfish (6.7) and boiled striped catfish (6.2) (P < 0.001). All other treatments were also preferred (P < 0.05) over the boiled striped catfish. In addition, for flavor and overall acceptability, the boiled striped catfish was liked less (P < 0.001) than all other treatment combinations with the exception of fried, fermented striped catfish. Overall, consumers had a slight preference for the appearance and aroma of fried over boiled fish. Walking catfish was liked moderately for both boiled and fried fish, and striped catfish should be either cooked fried or be fermented before it is boiled. In addition, striped snakehead did not differ in acceptability between frying and boiling methods. This indicates that striped catfish is the only fish that should not be boiled, and that striped catfish is better when being fried than when it is boiled.