Temporal Dominance of Sensations: Construction of the TDS curves and comparison with time-intensity

The evaluation of the temporality of the sensory perception in food products is mainly assessed using the time-intensity (TI) methodology. This approach is useful for studying the temporal aspects of the perception of a given sensory attribute in a product. When TI is used for several attributes, it quickly becomes very time-consuming because one run is needed by attribute. A new method of sensory evaluation, called Temporal Dominance of Sensations (TDS), was proposed by the authors a few years ago [Pineau, N., Cordelle, S.. & Schlich, P. (2003a). Temporal Dominance of Sensations: A new technique to record several sensory attributes simultaneously over time. In 5th Pangborn symposium (p. 121). July 20-24.]. It makes possible to collect temporal data during one single evaluation for up to 10 attributes on complex food products. The method consists in presenting the entire set of attributes to the panellist on the computer screen. Along the tasting of one product, the panellist has to wonder what the dominant sensory perception is and to select and score the corresponding attribute. Each time the panellist thinks the dominant sensory perception has changed, either in intensity or in quality, he/she has to score the new perception. For each run, this method enables to collect a sequence of sensory attributes (and their respective scoring) quoted at different times along the tasting. Based on one study on five dairy products, this paper explains how to describe the temporality of the sensations in a product thanks to the TDS curves. TI was also performed on the same products to compare the two methodologies. TDS and 11 results exhibit close patterns of sensations but TDS is found to better enhance the sequence of the sensations over time. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.