RELIABILITY OF SENSORY ASSESSORS: ISSUES OF COMPLEXITY

摘要

The objective of this study was to investigate whether the sensory performance of assessors in a sensory panel maybe explained by complexity of evaluated product. We aimed to investigate whether we could observe a decline in sensory performance when increasing the complexity of the product. The products increased in number of constituents from mixtures of sucrose, sodium chloride, citric acid and caffeine in water, to the foods ice tea and tomato soup constituting different levels of the same substances. Candidates who succeeded evaluating one product were not always successful evaluating others. Few subjects were successful in everything. The conclusion was that there is only minor systematic decline with increasing complexity of products. The authors emphasize that definition of complexity involves more than just counting number of constituents and taste sensations, and suggest that minor differences in the task given to the assessor might explain different performances.