CHAPTER 3:

SENSORY EVALUATION
 the assessment of all the qualities of a food
item as perceived by human senses.
The Institute of Food Technologists (IFT)
defines sensory evaluation as:
The scientific discipline used to evoke,
measure, analyse, and interpret human
reactions to those characteristics of foods
and beverages as they are perceived by the
senses of sight, smell, taste, touch and
hearing.
 Sensory taste, odour, flavour and
mouthfeel perception
 Two types of senses are involved in
sensory perception: chemical (taste
and odour) and physical (sight,
sound and touch)
 Defined as the sensation derived
from food as interpreted
through the tongue-to-brain
sensory system.

 The 4 primary taste sensations of

sweet, salty, sour and bitter as
well as umami all trigger brain
response.
 SWEET: glucose, sucrose, fructose
 SALTY: sodium chloride
 SOUR: acetic acid, citric acid
 BITTER: alkaloid or calcium chloride
in vegetables, caffeine in coffee
 UMAMI:
 Glutamate: brocolli, cheese, tomato
 Inosinate: fish, chicken, meat
 Guanylate: mushrooms
 Taste of glutamate, inosinate
or guanylate, important taste
elements in natural foods
 A basic taste along with sweet,
sour, salty and bitter
 It is usually described as meaty,
brothy or mouthfullness in
English
 Proteins composed of 20 kinds of amino acids
 Each amino acid has unique taste, 3 groups
 Umami –glu, asp
 Sweet – gly, ala, pro, ser, thr
 Bitter – arg, met, lys, his, val, leu, ile, phe
 The perceived sensation of food by the
epithelial lining within the oral cavity,
which includes tactile sensation as well
as thermal response.

 The manner in which small movements of

the tongue press the food against the gums
and palate perform an evaluation of
viscosity and texture.
 Odour or aroma can be defined
as the sensation derived from
food as interpreted through the
olfaction (sense of smell or
odour perception) mechanism.
 An overall impression
combining taste, odour,
mouthfeel factors and
trigeminal perception
(responsible for sensation in
the face)
MECHANICAL SENSORY CHARACTERISTICS
 Generally due to attractive forces
between the molecules in a food and the
opposing force of disintegration.
 Include: cohesiveness, viscosity,
chewiness and adhesiveness of foods.
 Cohesiveness - degree to which a food will
deform or compress between teeth before it
breaks.
 Viscosity – related to the force required to
draw a fluid food from a spoon across the
tongue at a steady rate.
 Chewiness – the length of time in seconds
required to chew a food sample at a steady
rate (one chew per sec) with a constant force
applied that results in a food consistency that
is just ready to be swallowed.
 Adhesiveness – force required to remove
food material that attaches to the mouth
(primarily the upper palate) during normal
chewing (range from sticky to tacky through
gooey (sticky and viscous)).
 Hardness – force required to compress
the food between the teeth (soft  firm
 hard)
 Viscosity – force required to draw a fluid food from a
spoon across the tongue at a steady rate (thin 
thick  viscous)
 Chewiness – length of time in seconds required to
chew a food at a steady rate with a constant force
(tender  chewy tough)
 Adhesiveness – force required to remove food
material that attach to the mouth (upper palate)
during normal chewing (sticky  tacky  gooey)
 GEOMETRICAL FOOD CHARACTERISTICS
 Related to the size of discrete food particles
present in food as well as shape and
orientation
 Size and shape – chalky gritty  grainy and
coarse
 Shape and orientation – fibrous  cellular
and crystalline
 Afterfeel
 Indicates that after certain foods are
chewed and eaten or beverages
sipped, a texture sensation residue
persists
 Why?
 Maybe some microscopic amounts of
matter continue interact with
sensory receptor and the oral lining
 Fat Content
 Foods differ in fat content, and also in the manner
in which fat is absorbed into them during
preparation & processing & released into the mouth
upon consumption
 Fats variable relative to oiliness and greasiness due
to vary with respect to melting behaviour
 Moisture Content

 Foods differ in moisture content, as well

as to the rate and manner of its
absorption & release
 It may vary from dry  moist  wet and
watery
 In addition to taste, flavour, and texture,
colour plays an important role in food
quality and sensory acceptability.
 Food possess colour based upon wavelengths
of reflected and absorbed visible light
 From a physics standpoint, visible light is
part of the electromagnetic spectrum and
visible light can be dissected into the
spectrum of colours, from violet to red,
each with a characteristic wavelength and
energy level.
Hunter Color Solid
 
Product Preparation Area
 A modern fully equipped kitchen for the
preparation and serving of test samples.
Testing Booths
 Adjacent to the product preparation area are 12
individual testing booths equipped with serving
windows and controlled lighting. All booths have
computers for ballot presentation and data
collection.
Meeting Room
 This room is used for descriptive panel training and
discussion, as well as a reception area for
consumer testing.
 Affective
 Discriminative
 Descriptive
 To quantify the degree of liking or
disliking of one product over another,
and include preference, hedonic, and
consumer acceptance tests.
 With food products, the two main
approaches to using consumers in
sensory evaluation are in measuring
preference and measuring acceptance
 Preference: allows consumer a choice
and asks for it to be made between
products on a hedonic (like, dislike)
basis.
 Consumer acceptance testing: consumers
rate their liking or disliking on a scale
Eg; like extremely response to a score of
9 and dislike extremely to a score of 1
 Comparative sample is not needed
 Require a large no of panelist (50-100 or
more)
 Advantage: provides essential
bottom line information

 Disadvantage: consumer
vocabulary difficult to interpret.
 Or difference tests simply attempt to
answer whether any difference at all
exists between 2 types of products.
 The test is between a control and a
test sample.
 The nature of difference is not
determined.
 Example of difference tests: difference
from control, duo-trio, paired
comparison, triangle test
 difference from control- 3 samples presented, a
control is designated, and the participant is asked to
select the one difference to the control
 duo-trio-3 samples are presented at the same time,
but a std is designated, and the participant is asked to
select the one most similar to the std
 paired comparison: 2 samples are presented and the
taster is asked to select the one that has the most of
a particular characteristic (sweet, sour, thick etc)
 triangle test
-3 samples are presented simultaneously-2 are the
same and one is different. Panelist are asked to
identify the odd sample

Advantage : simple
Disadvantage: limited information
 Seek to describe specific product
attributes related to flavour, texture,
mouthfeel etc by quantifying the perceived
intensities of specified sensory
characteristics
 Requires highly trained panelist familiar
with attribute scales
 Prove to be the most comprehensive and
information-sensitive evaluation tool
available to the sensory specialist.
Advantage: detailed information
Disadvantage: time-consuming
 Is a process in which a new food
product ideas are generated, and
the products themselves are
created and marketed.
 Involves the conceptualization,
formulation, processing, testing and
marketing of food products
 The products may be totally novel
or improvement modifications of
existing products
 Food manufacturer expands the
variety of products offered to
consumers.
 Present challenges to the
manufacturer in terms of
development costs, formulation,
testing, and marketing strategies.
 The idea stage: the initial stage
 Identifies the idea, concept, problem, or
specific challenge that the product
development team works with
 The development stage: works involve in
creating the design and nature of the product,
from a compositional standpoint as well as a
processing, packaging, and marketing one.
 The commercial stage: refers to the
production scale-up from pilot plant to
commercial plant, plus market testing and the
subsequent introduction of new product to a
nationwide market.
 
Idea stage:
 What is the anticipated demand for this product,
and who is the competition?
 Does the product meet a specific consumer need?
 Which ingredients, processing, and packaging are
required to formulate and manufacture the product,
and are they available at a reasonable cost?
 What are the desired characteristic of the new
product?
 How much time and money will it take to bring the
product to the commercial stage?
Development stage:
 Is the formulation reproducible, or are changes
needed?
 How will quality and cost be affected by altering
ingredients and processing conditions?
 What are the storage requirements of the product
and its shelf-life?
 Will spoilage due to yeasts, moulds, or bacteria be
a problem?
 Does the product require any special packaging?
 Does sensory analysis indicate the product is
meeting its concept goal?
 What is required to scale up for commercial
production of this product?
 
 
Commercial stage:
  How much operating time must be devoted to new
product manufacture at the manufacturing plant?
 How much cost is involved in large commercial batch
production runs?
 Are there any concerns regarding the bulk storage of
raw materials in the commercial plant?
 Does the product have to be returned to the pilot plant
for retesting for any reason, or is it ready to be test
marketed?
 What if any, image should the new product project?

 Where will the product be test marketed?

 How will consumer attention be directed toward the

new product?
 Is the institutional market a potential user of this
product?