The Taste, smell, sound, appearance & feel of food…What is Sensory Analysis?

There are some smells that most people really love -bacon frying, lavender or fresh sea air. Everyone loves the smell of bread while it’s baking and of a freshly baked loaf. It’s not surprising that the smell of baking bread evokes strong memories of comfort, family time and happiness.

When food producers are developing new recipes, one of the important steps is to get their potential customers to taste, smell, look at, eat and even hear the food. Dark chocolate snaps when you break it because it has a high percentage of cocoa solids. Or does anyone remember Space Rocks, which popped and fizzed in your mouth? The smell of bread evokes feelings and memories of wellbeing for people. When we smell bread, the olfactory bulb, which starts inside the nose and runs along the bottom of the brain, has direct connections to the two brain areas that are strongly connected to emotion and memory. These are called the ‘organoleptic’ properties of food and assessing them is what we call ‘sensory analysis’.

Sensory analysis of food uses the five senses – sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing – either individually or in combination, to look at the characteristics of food:

  • Appearance (sight) – we eat with our eyes!
  • Flavour (taste and touch) - The flavour of food is detected by the taste buds on the tongue and is actually a combination of taste and touch/texture. There are four types of taste sensation: sweet; salt; sour; and bitter.
  • Aroma (smell) - Smell detects the aroma of food – the smell of freshly-baked cakes, coffee brewing, lemon or garlic, for example – and is important in the appreciation of flavour. Aroma also helps to detect food that has gone off or sour;
  • Texture or ‘mouthfeel’ (touch) - how the food feels in your mouth – is a key quality for many foods, think smooth chocolate or the crunch when you break the surface of a crème brulée;
  • Sound (hearing) – think the sizzle of frying food, the fizz of drinks, the crunch of raw vegetables

When food producers are developing new recipes, trying it out on people who will give good feedback is important. To be able to describe specifically why customers like or don’t like a food can really help get that recipe just right. So, the next time you try something new, think about it for a moment, and really try to describe what it is about it that you like or don’t like, using all of your senses!

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