Comparison between temporal dominance of sensations (TDS) and key-attribute sensory profiling for evaluating solid food with contrasting textural layers: Fish sticks

Abstract

This study compared the performance of two sensory description methods, Temporal Dominance of Sensations (TDS) and key-attribute sensory profiling, in order to assess the sensory attributes of fish sticks (two different commercial brands) cooked by three different procedures (deep frying, conventional oven and microwaving).The TDS method has scarcely ever been applied to solid food and battered fish sticks are a particularly challenging case for sensory assessment, as the presence of contrasting texture layers complicates the description and evaluation of their attributes.The results of the TDS (untrained panellists) and key-attribute sensory profiling (trained panellists) methods were compared by Canonical Variates Analysis (CVA). Both methods gave similar results for the different samples. However, TDS made it possible to monitor the appearance and evolution of the different attributes over the consumption time, with the additional advantage of requiring practically no training.