ABSTRACT
This introduction is in three parts. The first part lists some reasons why sensory tests are done and traces briefly the history of their development. The second part introduces the basic approach of modern sensory analysis, which is to treat the panelists as measuring instruments. As such, they are highly variable and very prone to bias, but they are the only instruments that will measure what we want to measure, so we must minimize the variability and control the bias by making full use of the best existing techniques in psychology and psychophysics. In the third part we show how these techniques are applied with the aid of seven practical steps.
