Discrimination of sensory attributes by trained assessors and consumers in semi-sweet hard dough biscuits and their drivers of liking and disliking

• Published in: Food research international 2019-08, Vol.122, p.599-609
• Main Authors: Mello, Lívia Silva Simões, Almeida, Eveline Lopes, Melo, Lauro
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Acceptance testing; Check-all-that-apply; Fructose; Quantitative descriptive analysis; Vanilla aroma
• ISSN: 0963-9969; 1873-7145
• DOI: 10.1016/j.foodres.2019.01.031

Descriptive methods are traditionally performed with trained assessors to objectively analyze products, since consumers have long been considered incapable of performing such tests because they are influenced by hedonic evaluations. However, in the last decades, there have been alternative descriptive tests performed by consumers, due to other advantages, such as a rapid sensory profile assessment, reducing cost and time, and Check-all-that-apply (CATA) is an example. Thus, the objective of this work was to compare the performance of trained assessors (n = 15) and consumers using quantitative descriptive analysis (QDA) - traditional method and CATA - alternative method (n = 161 consumers, including acceptance test as well), for 5 samples of semi-sweet hard dough biscuit with different contents of specific ingredients: fructose (0.0 to 6.0%), vanilla aroma (0.0 to 1.2%) and water (9.0 to 13.8%). Results showed that the number of attributes in which trained assessors perceived significant differences was marginally higher (p