Sensory properties and preferences

Common mistakes are frequent in sensory evaluation of meats and meat products. Conceptual confusion is often observed in triangular tests when add-on questions are included in the testing procedures, and when descriptive and hedonic scales are mixed in profiling exercises. Similar consumer responses are often recorded from trained, and thus biased, panels. Preference for meats seems to be most strongly affected by changes in colour/appearance and texture, and to a lesser extent by changes in flavour (that is when off-flavours are not present). It is difficult to generalise as to whether appearance/colour attributes or texture attributes are the most important. A simplified model for texture understanding is suggested, where water/fat perception and structure perception (described by juiciness and tenderness) are orthogonal phenomena and where most other textural attributes can be explained by this structure.