Quality of cabbage during long term steaming; phytochemical, texture and colour evaluation

•Effect of steaming time on glucosinolates, colour and texture of cabbage is studied.•Total accessible glucosinolates increase by steaming until 10 min.•A model describes the glucosinolate changes by considering underlying mechanisms.•The greenness of cabbage increases until 5 min of steaming then decreases.•The hardness value continuously declines during long term steaming of cabbage.

Steaming has been reported to better retain the glucosinolate (GS) content in Brassica vegetables than boiling. However, there is little information on the GS content, colour, and texture attributes in Brassica vegetables in relation to the duration of steaming. This study investigated the effect of the duration of steaming, which was applied in certain commercial preparation processes, on the GS content, colour, and texture of white cabbage. Results showed that the total accessible content of GSs increases initially during steaming until 10 min followed by a consistent decline up to 180 min. This observed initial increase is mainly due to the content of aliphatic GSs rather than indole GSs, which tend to decrease from the start of steaming. A mathematic model for the observed behaviour of the GSs, taking into account several mechanisms, is proposed and fitted to the data. The intensity of the green colour of the cabbage slightly increased during the first 15 min of steaming followed by a decrease onwards. The hardness showed a continuous decline during the entire steaming duration. The study indicates that steaming up to 10 min could promote the health properties as well as the colour and texture attributes of steamed cabbage.