A Mattson bean cooker apparatus was modified to electronically register individual cooked seeds by automatically recording the time taken for each plunger to drop. Contact switches, interfaced with a computer via a digital input/output board, were activated when individual plungers dropped through the cooked seeds. It was found that at the time when 80% of the seeds had been penetrated the Mattson cooker method agreed with a tactile method for determining cooking times for yellow peas (Pisum sativum), lentils (Lens culinaris), chickpeas (Cicer arietinum) and navy beans (Phaseolus vulgaris). Compared with the tactile method, the automated Mattson cooker method was more objective, much easier to carry out and more resource-efficient. The automated Mattson cooker could provide plant breeders and the pulse industry with a reference testing method for evaluating the cookability of pulses.

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