The Aroma of Canned Beef: Models for Correlation of Instrumental and Sensory Data

Stevens' and Fechner's relations have been applied in a generalized form: they have been expressed as functions in several variables. These functions have been formulated in analogy with models used in other psychophysical contexts and are considered to handle simple interactions between chemical stimuli compounds. It is suggested that the different outcomes can be classified into three categories: ad hoc relations, predictive relations and causative relations. The meaning and interpretability of these are discussed. The models have been tested on data from samples of canned beef: different formulations and heating times. A large number of high correlations were obtained for the different odor qualities and the presence of possible causative relations among these are discussed.