Investigating sensory abilities of professional sensory assessors by comparing their performances in different sensory methods
J. Bitnes 1,2*, Ø. Ueland1
1Matforsk AS, Norway; janna.bitnes@matforsk.no
2The Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, Denmark
The food industry places much effort in training sensory panels to identify "the basic tastes” in water solutions. This test is a screening test that finds the sensitivity levels of the individual panellists, but in practise, the test is also used to monitor the assessors’ general sensory abilities. The objective of this study was to evaluate the use of the basic taste test to predict the performance of assessors with more complex products.
Sensory assessors of the professional sensory panel at Matforsk performed four different tests. The products that were evaluated increased in complexity from pure solutions and mixtures of sucrose, salt, acid and bitter compounds in water, to the complex foods ice-tea and tomato soup constituting different levels of the same substances. The identification ability of the pure basic taste solutions were compared to the ability to discriminate between different intensities of mixtures of the same substances in water, tomato soup and ice-tea.
Very few relationships between identification ability of the basic tastes and judging ability for foods were evident. This can be seen in Fig.1 where a high signal/noise ratio indicate high sensory performance. This was also the case between judging ability for different food products.
Conclusion: The use of basic taste testing with water solutions does not seem to be a good predictor for assessors performance on other complex food systems.