Making perfect scents

If manufacturers are serious about launching a new food or drink in a major European market, they will probably have to cough up the best part of Euro 10-20M.

But ask them to spend a mere Euro10,000 on some decent sensory work at the start of this process, and many may still regard this as an unacceptable expense, says Dag Piper, global director of sensory and consumer science at German flavours firm Symrise. "But it's a false economy. If they get it wrong, that's Euro 20M down the drain, not just Euro10,000."

In an ideal world, he says, sensory experts would be brought in right at the beginning of any major project, and then work seamlessly with colleagues in marketing and consumer research to develop and refine products that customers will want to buy again and again.

In practice, of course, many companies still see sensory testing as a luxury they can't afford, says Dr Alexander Quadt, head of sensory and consumer science at German beverage ingredients giant Döhler. "Small companies will often do some classical market research but skip sensory altogether or leave it too late. It's 'the chairman's wife likes it' syndrome. Sadly, that's produced a lot of flops. The concept might be great, but if the product doesn't match, it won't work."

This can be a particular problem with functional foods, where attention can be focused almost solely on proving and marketing the health benefit, rather than whether the product actually tastes any good, argues Jennifer Cooper, vice president of technical services at US sensory testing firm Lead Point Solutions.

"Too many companies still regard sensory as a 'disaster check'. There is also a lingering perception that people that buy functional or health foods are prepared to sacrifice sensory pleasure for functionality. That might be the case for bodybuilders, but not for the mass market."

A failure to test products in the field can also cause problems later on, says Cooper. "Sipping 2oz of a hypertonic sports drink from a paper cup in a testing booth is not the same as gulping down 16oz from a bottle after a workout. Your tolerance for sweetness is different, everything about the experience is different, and usually, the more people drink, the less they like it."

Not just for Christmas​

Of course, sensory performance is not the sole driver of commercial success. Indeed, it is well known that market-leading brands do not always outperform rivals in blind tasting tests, says Quadt at Döhler. "Pills are a classic example. Most products get similar scores in blind taste tests, but as soon as we tell people what they are drinking, there are huge variations in acceptance!"

Consumers, says GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) sensory scientist Lauren Rogers, have already formed expectations about what a product should be like well before they consume it, which means that organoleptic properties, appearance and packaging must all be aligned if it is to succeed.

But what about products that are already on the market? Happily for those in the sensory business, says Cooper, manufacturers are increasingly recognising the value of sensory and consumer testing throughout the life cycle of a product, to assess the impact of adding a functional ingredient, switching a supplier or using a cheaper ingredient.

They are also using it to find out what rivals are doing, with some benchmarking work often revealing formulation changes in competitor products, she says. "That could be the reason your sales are dropping off; everyone else has upped their game."

She adds: "We are also seeing more companies using sensory for brand and flavour 'refreshment'. It's an emerging part of brand management. Consumers get flavour fatigue and preferences for things like vanilla are modernised."

But more basic sensory work can also save companies a lot of money, notes GSK's Rogers: "If you give people sandwiches with different amounts of butter, but the same filling, and ask them to rate them, liking may not drop until you're using hardly any butter. If people don't notice the difference between 5g and 10g of butter, why use 10g?"

Tools of the trade​

So what are the tools of the trade, and have things changed much in recent years?

Probably the most significant development has been the growth of techniques enabling companies to link results of consumer, sensory and analytical data to form a picture of the sensory drivers of consumer preference, says Els de Vos, sensory and beverage applications engineer at Tate & Lyle.

This not only speeds up the development process, but also enables companies to use sensory proactively to identify new concepts rather than simply refining ones already in development. It can also help companies making products for multiple markets.

At the start of a traditional sensory analysis process, a trained sensory panel must first identify which attributes (crunchiness, sweetness) are relevant, says Leatherhead Food International (LFI) team leader, sensory and consumer science, Cindy Beeren. "They might do a comprehensive assessment of appearance, aroma, flavour and texture and so on, or a much more limited assessment focusing on one attribute."

By grading relevant attributes on a scale of 1-10 and keying this data into a computer programme, panellists can generate spider graphs that enable them to visually compare products.

But companies are under pressure to speed up and refine sensory work, which can be costly and time consuming, says Sophie Davodeau, head of global sensory at Givaudan, the Swiss flavours giant.

Givaudan has been particularly innovative when it comes to using new kit to speed up sensory work, developing the award-winning Virtual Aroma Synthesizer (VAS) device (there is now a portable version as well), which enables staff and customers to test and refine a vast array of aromas in minutes, tweaking formulations and "smelling the difference in real time", says Davodeau.

Customers can modify aromas in real time until they get one which they like, she says. "This is giving us a real competitive advantage as demand for quick, reliable techniques that provide instant feedback increases."

While machines may never replace people, they are very good at compositional analysis, says Carol Karahadian, vice president global sensory evaluation (flavours) at Swiss company Firmenich. "However, they are often unable to quantify the exact flavour thresholds of molecules with very low taste and aroma perception or to detect the subtle perceptual influences that occur with ingredient changes.

"Therefore, it is important to monitor the human response in addition to instrumental analysis when measuring flavour perception."

This is particularly important for products like chewing gum where our ability to detect flavour over a sustained period of time is contingent on the presence of other ingredients such as sugar.

But some things can cause problems for machines and humans alike, says Karahadian. "Creaminess is difficult to describe and quantify because it's a taste and a texture, so it can cause real problems with consistent attribute quantification."

Sound, along with texture, is also important. It is well known for example that consumers wearing sound-proofing headphones will perceive crisps from the same packet as 'less fresh' than people able to hear themselves crunching away.

Monkeys and mistakes​

From a practical point of view, sensory experts still make mistakes, says Beeren. "It's basic stuff, like sampling too many things in one session, or skewing results by testing samples with the strongest flavours first."

No one technique is 100% reliable, and even trained professionals can walk into traps, as demonstrated by a trick GSK's Rogers recently played on colleagues. "I gave them a couple of samples of a drink and said one had a taint.

"Sure enough, several of them agreed and said there was 'definitely something a bit off' about one of the samples. In fact, they were identical, I had poured them from exactly the same bottle."

Beeren recalls a sensory training video featuring basketball players in which viewers were asked to count the number of times a ball was caught.

Their scores were excellent; but no one noticed that a monkey walked in half way through the video. In sensory analysis, like everything else, says Beeren, if you're not looking for something, you may not notice the elephant - or in this case the monkey - in the room.