Market-optimum instrumental values from individual consumers' discriminations of standard sensory quality of the texture of short-dough biscuits

A small diverse panel of untrained assessors made quantitative descriptive judgements of the hardness, crispness and crunchiness of short dough biscuits varying independently in compliance and force of fracture at first bite, and in the sizes and frequency of cracks when the bitten-off piece of biscuit was first crushed. Each individual's ratings relative to a market recipe were scaled in 50%-discrimination distances from market standard on each instrumental measure, and personal ranges of top quality were calculated. These quality ranges were aggregated across the panel to provide profiles of estimated market popularity within the range of values tested of each instrumental measure of a sensed fracture pattern. Each market response profile was single-peaked despite the diversity of the panel. Hence, this method will establish market-optimum instrumental criteria for food quality from modestly sized panels of representative end-users without sensory training. It is therefore a powerful and economical tool for product development and quality control.