## 3 Results and Discussion
### Texture  
The strain-force curves of the cooked 3D-printed square pillars are shown in Figure 5a. In general, the strain-force curves had an S-shape. This type of behavior is common in breads, cakes, other highly aerated deformable foods, and some cheeses [32]. However,the strain-force curves of NCD + CP-WOC and NCD + CP-SC showed a large S-shape in comparison to the strain-force curves of NCD-WOC and NCD-SC which showed a slight S-shape. This behavior may be due to the presence of a CP phase with different hardness values in the intermediate phase of the 3D-printed square pillars. Three different regions are identified in the S-shaped curve: (1) linear elastic, (2) plastic buckling, and (3) densification [33]. The linear elastic region is at the beginning of the curve. If a sample is loaded only within this region, no permanent deformation occurs. The linear elastic region of the cooked 3D-printed square pillars exhibited a J-shape. This indicated that the stress increased at a faster rate than the strain as energy was added to the samples. This permits the 3D-printed square pillars to withstand higher levels of stress before reaching the yield stress, which is the stress where a material transitions from the elastic to the plastic region [34]. The slope of the linear elastic region was found to be 0.83 for NCD-SC, 1.22 for NCD-WOC, 2.27 for NCD + CP-WOC, and 3.91 for NCD + CP-SC. This suggests that multi-material treatments including NCD + CP-WOC and NCD + CP-SC exhibited greater resistance than single-material treatments, NCD-WOC and NCD-SC. This is evidenced by the necessity for a higher force to achieve the same strain. The plastic buckling region is characterized by a plateau region, which is associated with the collapse of the cells. In this region, permanent deformation occurs [34; 35]. The plastic buckling region of the cooked 3D-printed square pillars of NCD-WOC and NCD-SC is relatively small, indicating that they are unable to absorb a significant amount of energy. In contrast, the plastic buckling region of NCD + CP-WOC and NCD + CP-SC is larger. These results suggest that the incorporation of CP into the multi-material square pillars enables them to absorb a greater amount of energy in comparison with single-material square pillars. Finally, in the densification region, the stress increases at a higher rate due to the occurrence of microscopic changes in the material as it plastically deforms, thereby enhancing its strength and reflecting material densification [34; 36]. Following this point, the samples may attain the ultimate compressive strength, which represents the maximum stress experienced by the material prior to fracture. Figure 5: \(Cont.\)  
In Figure 5b,c, the forces required to reach 40 and 80% of the strain, are shown, respectively. Force at 40% and 80% of strain were selected for analysis since the former is within the linear elastic region, prior to reaching the plastic buckling region. This may provide insights into the initial deformation of the 3D-printed square pillars. Moreover, it is close to the failure point which reflects the internal structure failure of the 3D-printed foods. Figure 5: Texture of the cooked 3D-printed square pillars: (**a**) Strain-force curves (**b**) Force at 40% of strain; (**c**) Force at 80% of strain. (NCD: Nistamalized corn dough, CP: Chickpea paste, WOC: Water oven cooking, SC: Steam cooking, m: slope of the linear elastic region) (Plots and error bars represent the mean and standard deviation of five repeated measurements) (Different alphabets in the bars indicate that the data are significantly different with \(p<0.05\) by [PERSON]’s test). In contrast, force at 80% of strain falls within the upper detection limit of the load cell of the texture analyzer [10]. The forces needed to reach 40% of strain in NCD-WOC and NCD-SC were 29.64 and 27.57 N, respectively. On the contrary, for the multi-material treatments, NCD + CP-WOC and NCD + CP-SC, the forces needed to reach 40% strain were 63.01 and 106.26 N, respectively.