The Use of Sensory and Instrumental Assessment of Organoleptic Characteristics via Multivariate Statistical Methods

The need to select relevant sensory and instrumental variables is discussed and illustrated by an example concerned with the textural characteristics of a gel system. Discriminant analysis is used to identify the important sensory and instrumental variables and multiple regression to verify that the instrumental variables contain the required information. The limitations of this approach and possible modifications to deal with particular problems are also discussed. The approach described has proved successful in a number of applications