Apples were washed, peeled manually and cut into 1 cm side cubes, discarding the core. Then, 250 g of these were placed in a steamer at 99.1 ◦C (Moulinex, France) fed with distilled water, and processed for 10 min to inactivate the polyphenol oxidase (PPO) in the whole volume of pieces to avoid enzy- matic browning of apple pulp in subsequent stages. Cubes were removed from the steamer to be immediately placed in a container cooled by an ice/water bath.