Mechanical, rheological, and sensory characterization of lion's mane mushroom steak

Abstract

Mushrooms are increasingly recognized as delicious, nutritious, and sustainable foods, with an intrinsic umami flavor and fibrous microstructure that can approximate meat-like texture. Among them, lions mane mushroom has emerged as a promising candidate for whole-cut meat alternatives. Yet, its mechanical, rheological, and sensory properties remain largely unquantified. Here we show that a minimally processed lions mane mushroom steak exhibits distinctive mechanical, rheological, and sensory characteristics that position it favorably among existing meat alternatives. Despite its pronounced fibrous morphology, lions mane steak behaves predominantly as an isotropic material under both mechanical loading and rheological testing, with elastic stiffnesses of E = 33.2 kPa and E = 34.8 kPa in-plane and cross-plane. A fundamental challenge in alternative protein development is to understand how these measurable physical properties relate to human texture perception. In a complementary sensory survey, n = 21 participants ranked lions mane steak as more fatty, fibrous, moist, and meaty than eight animal- and plant-based comparison meats. Strikingly, our perceived sensory softness correlates inversely with our experimentally measured mechanical stiffness ({tau}=-0.60, p = 0.02) and rheological loss modulus ({tau}=-0.56, p = 0.03). Taken together, our results demonstrate that lions mane steak combines favorable mechanical performance with desirable sensory attributes and provide a mechanistic link between physics and taste. Our findings highlight lions mane mushroom as a compelling whole-cut alternative protein and underscore the value of integrated mechanical-sensory characterization for rational food design.