When we make chicken fajitas or a simple stir-fry, the seasoning is everything to the taste of the product. The most bland piece of meat can be turned into a work of pure joy by adding a stock cube to produce a gravy or stew. What hits us first ? Aroma !

Understanding the aroma of seasonings requires lots of product development in conjunction with sensory panellists to establish what gives us that wowing factor. Descriptive sensory analysis is probably most developer’s method of choice and the only referencing technique to hand which is normalised for aroma or odour assessments. Trained tasters are needed to provide a custom built library of words – a language to describe the product, its attributes and characteristics. Unfortunately, tasting by humans is time consuming, and tiring both mentally and physically.

What has this to do with seasonings ? When it comes to seasonings which have such intense aroma, missing critical information could decide the outcome of the competition. The same sensory methods outlined are used with trained panellists. Now, there are alternative methods which rely on the electronic nose coupled to various forms of multivariate statistical analysis. One research group yet to publish formally from the Shanghai Inst. Of Technology, China compared a sensory panel’s performance with that of the electronic nose. Beef and chicken seasonings from various sources were assessed using electronic nose coupled with principal component analysis (PCA), discriminant factor analysis (DFA), and cluster analysis (CA). Correlation between the sensory panel and the technology was established using the statistical method : partial least squares regression (PLSR). The electronic nose produced a high correlation coefficient of at least 0.8. which is reasonable when compared to such an advanced organ – a nose.

Finally, a seasoning albeit chicken or beef is described by the panellists as the named animal, gamey, spicy, onion, soy sauce (particular to Chinese cooking), and garlic. Given such a complex product, the electronic nose continues to make its case.

References

Tian, H., Li, F., Qin, L., Yu, H. and Ma, X. (2014) Discrimination of Chicken Seasonings and Beef Seasonings Using Electronic Nose and Sensory Evaluation. J. Food Sci.. doi: 10.1111/1750-3841.12675