COMPARISON OF DESCRIPTIVE TERMINOLOGY SYSTEMS FOR SENSORY EVALUATION OF FLUID MILK

A defect-oriented sensory terminology system traditionally used in the dairy industry was compared with a panel-generated consumer-oriented terminology system for the quantitative sensory description of fluid milk characteristics. Samples were treated to produce light-oxidized, metallic-oxidized and rancid flavors. The discriminative sensitivity of two panels, one using each terminology system, was compared using sets of six treated milk samples. Given the same amount of training, the panel generating their own terminology system was more sensitive than the panel using the traditional terms, showing better differentiation of treated samples from controls, between levels of sample treatments, and among types of defects. These results suggest that a descriptive analysis procedure is a feasible alternative to a traditional defect-oriented system for sensory analysis of milk.