342 Chilled foods using trained people will only tell you one side of the story; how is a product characterised? In an increasingly competitive market, food manufacturers have realised the eed to ask their existing and potential customers what they like and dislike through preference tests. This will form the second side of the story and the ction dedicated to consumer acceptability will provide an exhaustive list of preference tests used to understand liking patterns. The final section will foc on combining these two sets of information, subjective and objective, to develop consumer-driven specifications that will fulfil their expectations 12.2 What defines sensory quality? The sensory quality of a product can be divided into its appearance, smell, texture. flavour and also aftertaste 12.2.1 Appearance The appearance of a product is the first assessment that a consumer will undertake to define the quality of a chilled product. Many aspects of the visual component of a food product can be used to assess its quality. The size, the shape the distribution of pieces, the surface texture, the colour and the brightness are all determining factors to assess freshness and overall quality expectation. The dullness or sheen of the surface in red meat combined with the redness of the flesh are used by consumers to assess the freshness of meat products in supermarkets. In return, supermarkets use lighting and in some instance spraying thin layer of water to improve the visual quality of meat behind counters The appearance can be divided into optical and visual structure components The optical appearance is mainly related to colour, gloss and translucency. The visual structure is linked to the texture of the product, including particle size, smoothness and surface texture. Colour is probably the first and main characteristic that a customer will use to judge the quality of a chilled product as the deterioration of food is often linked to a colour change(Piggott 1988) Colour is also involved with a psychological dimension; red is associated with power, orange and yellow with excitement and cheerfulness. The food industry is therefore spending a considerable amount of resources on eye-catching properties. In particular, farmed salmon are fed with carotenoids to give them a pink/orange colour, further enhanced when smoked, which is considered to be a sign of quality and freshness in the mind of the consumer 12.2.2 Odour: type, intensity The smell of chilled food gives a good indication of the freshness and quality An odour is detected when volatiles are inhaled into the nasal cavity and make contact with the olfactory system. Our smelling system is more modest equipment than our vision system, detecting only 10,000 odours with 5 millionquality using trained people will only tell you one side of the story; how is a chilled product characterised? In an increasingly competitive market, food manufacturers have realised the need to ask their existing and potential customers what they like and dislike through preference tests. This will form the second side of the story and the section dedicated to consumer acceptability will provide an exhaustive list of preference tests used to understand liking patterns. The final section will focus on combining these two sets of information, subjective and objective, to develop consumer-driven specifications that will fulfil their expectations. 12.2 What defines sensory quality? The sensory quality of a product can be divided into its appearance, smell, texture, flavour and also aftertaste. 12.2.1 Appearance The appearance of a product is the first assessment that a consumer will undertake to define the quality of a chilled product. Many aspects of the visual component of a food product can be used to assess its quality. The size, the shape, the distribution of pieces, the surface texture, the colour and the brightness are all determining factors to assess freshness and overall quality expectation. The dullness or sheen of the surface in red meat combined with the redness of the flesh are used by consumers to assess the freshness of meat products in supermarkets. In return, supermarkets use lighting and in some instance spraying a thin layer of water to improve the visual quality of meat behind counters. The appearance can be divided into optical and visual structure components. The optical appearance is mainly related to colour, gloss and translucency. The visual structure is linked to the texture of the product, including particle size, smoothness and surface texture. Colour is probably the first and main characteristic that a customer will use to judge the quality of a chilled product, as the deterioration of food is often linked to a colour change (Piggott 1988). Colour is also involved with a psychological dimension; red is associated with power, orange and yellow with excitement and cheerfulness. The food industry is therefore spending a considerable amount of resources on eye-catching properties. In particular, farmed salmon are fed with carotenoids to give them a pink/orange colour, further enhanced when smoked, which is considered to be a sign of quality and freshness in the mind of the consumer. 12.2.2 Odour: type, intensity The smell of chilled food gives a good indication of the freshness and quality. An odour is detected when volatiles are inhaled into the nasal cavity and make contact with the olfactory system. Our smelling system is more modest equipment than our vision system, detecting only 10,000 odours with 5 million 342 Chilled foods