Preference mapping: relating acceptance of 'creaminess' to a descriptive sensory map of a semi-solid

Creaminess is used by consumers to describe the texture of many food products. The overall objective of this study was to investigate the underlying sensations to the acceptance of textural creaminess. Eight puddings varying in thickness, mouthcoating, rate of melt and smoothness were developed by altering the amount and type of starch, amount of milk-fat and amount of sodium salts. Puddings were evaluated by descriptive analysis for appearance, texture and flavor characteristics. Concurrently, consumers evaluated the puddings for “liking of creamy texture”. Sensory descriptive data were subjected to principal component analysis, resulting in a multidimensional product space that was related to the consumer acceptance data using the AUTOFIT selection strategy. More than 90% of consumer responses were selected and validated by AUTOFIT. A dimension related to thickness seemed important to consumer acceptance of creamy texture. In general, hedonic scores for creamy texture were higher for samples that were smoother and had more dairy flavor, although, hedonic scores for creamy texture varied considerably on dimensions related to dairy flavor and smoothness.