Consistency of a Trained Taste Panel

Open Access
Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
A means of determining the reliability of a trained taste panel is to test their consistency of judgments on duplicate samples. Fourteen hundred and twenty- three duplicate sets of' research milk samples were tested by 19 judges, for identification and measurement of in- tensity of off-flavor. The samples were scored on a 10-point scale ranging from 31 to 40. Each of the 17 flavor criticisms is based on a 6-point range. Analysis of data indicates an acceptable degree of con- sistency in panel performance, even though there is considerable variation among judges. The average absolute differences determined on a monthly basis ranged from 0.10 to 0.39 for a mean of 0.26 for the panel as a whole, whereas, for individual judges the range was 0.41 to 0.80 for a mean of 0.65. The research program of the Dairy Products Laboratory includes the flavor evaluation of a large number of experimental milk samples for a) identification, and b) measurement of intensity of off-flavor. Since October, 1957, a trained taste panel has served as an analytical tool to provide an unbiased sensory evaluation of experimental samples of processed milks. Because the reliability of flavor evaluation de- pends upon the sensitivity and consistency of the judges, it is important to maintain a con- stant check on their performance. The ob- jective of this paper was to determine individ- uals' ability to reproduce their evaluation of duplicate samples. Experimental Procedure

This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit: