FOOD9102 Chap.1 Sensory Analysis and the Three Test Families
Sensory Analysis and the Three Test Families
This chapter sets up the vocabulary of the whole course. It gives the AIFST definition of sensory science and the narrower meaning of sensory testing, explains why a product that passes every instrument check still has to be judged by people, and lists the seven industry goals the Week 1 lecture names.
It then maps the three test families, discrimination, descriptive and affective, onto the questions they answer, and closes with the five steps of any study, from defining the problem to analysing the data.
Treat this chapter as the map for everything that follows.
Chapters 2 and 3 develop the design and statistics that every test shares; Chapters 4 and 5 expand the discrimination family; Chapters 6 to 8 expand the affective family; and Chapter 9 explains the biology of what panellists perceive.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Sensory science and sensory testing, defined
- 02
Sensory analysis as the final check on a finished product
- 03
Seven reasons companies run sensory tests
- 04
Discrimination tests: can people tell the difference?
- 05
Descriptive analysis: how do the products differ, and how strongly?
- 06
Affective tests: how much is it liked, and which is preferred?
- 07
The five steps from problem to analysed data
Worked example · free
Match three ice-cream briefs to a test family
- 1(a) Discrimination: can panellists tell ice cream made with the current vanilla from ice cream made with the new supplier's vanilla?
- 1(b) Descriptive: how intense is the bitterness of each dark chocolate flavour, rated on an intensity scale?
- 1(c) Affective, as a preference test: which of the two new flavours do target buyers prefer?
Key terms
- Sensorial properties
- Sensorial properties are the characteristics of a food that people perceive through sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing.
- Descriptive analysis
- Descriptive analysis is the family of tests that identifies which attributes a product has and rates their intensity.
- Affective test
- An affective test measures how people feel about a product, either how much they like it or which version they prefer.
- Research question
- A research question is the specific, answerable question a sensory test is designed to settle, naming the samples involved.
- Panellist
- A panellist is a person who tastes and rates samples in a sensory test, acting as the measuring instrument.
- Shelf-life testing
- Shelf-life testing establishes how long a product can be stored before its quality becomes noticeably or unacceptably worse.
Sensory Analysis and the Three Test Families FAQ
Why do companies still need people when instruments can measure texture and colour?
Instruments describe the product, but only people can say how it is perceived and whether they would buy it. The Week 1 lecture places sensory analysis after the safety, quality and physical tests for exactly that reason, and frames its purpose as understanding the relationship between consumers and a food's sensorial properties.
How do I tell a descriptive question from an affective one?
A descriptive question asks what an attribute is like or how intense it is, such as how sweet a drink tastes. An affective question asks about liking or choice, such as how much someone likes the sweetness. The same attribute can appear in both, so look at whether the panellist is reporting a perception or a feeling.
What are the five steps of a sensory study?
Determine the problem, ask a research question, design the test, run the test and analyse the data. The design step is where bias is prevented and validity is secured, and the analysis step uses statistics so that any claim about the product rests on evidence rather than impression.
Does every food product really go through sensory analysis?
The Week 1 lecture says that essentially every product a company makes needs some form of sensory analysis, because consumers who do not like a product will not buy it. The bar can be liking it enough to buy, liking it more than a competitor's product, or simply meeting an acceptable standard or grade.
Assessment move
Learn the two definitions exactly, then make a one-line card for each test family with its question, a reason to use it and an example product. Practise with real packaging in a supermarket: for each claim you see, decide which family of test would be needed to support it. Quiz 1 rewards quick, confident classification, and the later laboratory reports assume you can justify the family before you justify the specific test.
When you meet a new scenario in a later chapter, name its family first; the right specific test follows much more easily once the family is fixed. A useful self-test is to explain to a friend why a company cannot rely on its own product developers' palates, using the idea of a panel that represents the population.
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