ABSTRACT

Now, at the dawn of the twenty-‘rst century, sensory evaluation has become more important than ever: marketplace is consumer driven, and studying foods using machines and chemical reactions is not enough any more. Since the mid-twentieth century, industries and academia have embraced sensory evaluation as an invaluable tool for creating successful products and understanding the sensory properties of materials. Moreover, sensory evaluation lends itself beyond its original domain, human foods, to any materials (e.g., deodorant, fabric) that will be used by any conscious living beings (e.g., humans, cats, dogs), whose responses can be measured appropriately. In this chapter, however, we limit the discussion to human foods only.