94088 - Sensory Traits as Quality Descriptors for Animal Foods Ffrom Land and Waters.

Learning outcomes

Over the years, the focus of this teaching course has become the sensory characterization of animal foods, a subject of great relevance, though utterly missing from most of the students’ curricula.

In my own intentions, in the end each students will be able to verify what does it mean, within this subject, to play each of the two possible roles: either that of the would-be panelist or that of the staff member for the panel leader. At any rate, what each students can learn, as ascertained in several occasions, is quickly translatable into action, once that student leave.

With this success story the recent pandemic has heavily interacted, in fact forcing distance learning, after a couple of months of lectures and authentic exercises. We tried to make the senses of the learners "work" equally, but from far away, in  isolation, "with-a-thousand-doubts-on", with an "instrument" as effective (and aseptic) as Microsoft Teams and, moreover, necessarily, on trivial matrices, poor in history and personalities such as those that anyone can find anywhere in the GDO (which is "Grande Distribuzione Organizzata").

As practically always happens, however, it has been noted that not all evil had come to harm. Torturing our brains, we have been able to find suitable food and ways of working that can be envisaged at a distance, without all this presenting the demeaning patina of the makeshift.

Course contents

OVERVIEW – The basis of sensory analysis

Aim: How to think about animal foods as susceptible to be sensorily analysed in order to solve a good deal of technical questions.

Introduction to the course; main topics, didactic material, frontal lectures and practical works. The importance of attending lessons. Definition of sensory analysis as applied to food in general, to animal foods in particular. What a group of selected and trained assessors (= panel) could do for “the cause”, i.e. to really improve the perceived quality of animal foods.

Food traits which may be assessed with our senses, once it has been ascertained that they are able to work properly.

Discriminant tests: theory and applications to animal foods.

Descriptive tests: functions and functionality of the so-called “descriptors”, which have to be defined and appropriately measured; the purpose of references. Graphical representation of the results: the spider web.

WOULD-BE PANELLISTS: to be scrutinized!

Aim: Through being exposed to a demanding series of stimuli, students live, and therefore learn, both assumptions and limits of sensory analisis. The results of each test will be disclosed during the very same lectures, so that each student could make the most of the sensory work he/she did.

Students will be interviewed as would be-panelists. Fragrance quiz, flavour quiz, texture quiz. Surface area assessment, Ishihara test and Farnsworth-Munsell 100 Hue test. ISO norm 8586 (2012) about panellist selection and training. Triangle tests’ roles towards selection and training phases. Normosensitivity assessment as to basic tastes, mouthfeels, odour recognition and intensity evaluation, smelling and tasting, with results evaluation.

ISO norm 11036 (2020) as to texture assessment, with practical work and result evaluation.

DESCRIPTIVE SENSORY ANALYSIS

Aim: Students will be able to live and learn what a sensory profile is and what are the steps through which it would be possible to outline it

ISO norms 11035 (1994) and 13299 (2016) will be described to help in finding useful descriptors to get to a resembling sensory portrait of any given food. Monofloral honeys as a useful animal food able to exemplify what a given descriptor is and how does it work. Within this context, how do UNI monofloral honeys perform?

Profiling practice on selected European hard and semi-hard DOP cheeses. Two working days, the former three days apart from the latter, out of which sensory job the complete flavor profile of the cheeses under scrutiny should emerge. In case enough time to spare should be available out of this part of the program, further cases of sensory profiling, as taken from literature, might be explained either by the teacher herself, or by some students, as supervised work, thus attaining a far deep level of knowledge.

OTHER DAIRY PRODUCTS

Aim: Students will learn how to properly assess the sensory properties of fast ripening cheeses and yogurt

“Sensory” attention will be paid to the most popular dairy products: yogurt and soft cheeses, the latter being particular as far as the portioning technique and serving temperature are concerned (in the preceding weeks sensory analysis of dairy products will have intentionally been approached starting from hard cheeses, to generate a long lasting impression in the students’ mind.

MUSCLE FOODS FROM LAND ANIMALS

Aim: Students are expected to learn how to put these foods and their derived products into healthy diets, as well as how to prepare their sensory profile for both cooked flesh and matured meat products.

How the remarkable nutritional assets of land animals, even the most unusual ones, could be appreciated by the modern consumer.

How to outline the complete sensory profile of fresh meats (beef, in particular) and processed meats (pork, in particular).

Special profiling practice on meat products of the same kind (for instance on bresaolas or mortadellas), though of widely different commercial value.

SEAFOOD (finfish, mollusks and crustaceans)

Aim: Students will learn an excellent technique to sensorily assess the freshness quality of this kind of animal food and the procedure to build either partial or complete descriptive profiles

Post mortem evolution in finfish, mollusks and crustaceans.

A univocal definition of Freshness Quality (FQ). How to assess seafood FQ through our senses, according to a special kind of category scaling named Quality Index Method (QIM): the most recent schemes.

Descriptive sensory analysis finalized to the improvement of seafood quality: theoretical aspects and case studies. Comparative profiling practice on preserved fish.

Readings/Bibliography

Alasalvar C., Miyashita K., Shahidi F., Wanasundara U. (Eds), Handbook of seafood quality, safety and health application, Wiley Blackwell, Chichester, West Sussex, UK, 2010.

Kemp S.E., Hort J., Hollowood T. (Eds.), Descriptive Analysis in Sensory Evaluation, Wiley Blackwell, Chichester, West Sussex, UK, 2018.

Kerry J.P., Ledward D. (Eds), Improving the sensory and nutritional quality of fresh meat, Woodhead Publishing Limited, Cambridge, UK, 2009.

Mucchetti G., Neviani E., Microbiologia e tecnologia lattiero-casearia, qualita' e sicurezza, Tecniche Nuove, Milano, Italia, 2006.

Sabatini A.G., Bortolotti L., Marcazzan G.L. (Eds), Conoscere il miele, Avenue media, Bologna, Italia, 2007.

Societa' Italiana di Scienze Sensoriali (SISS). Atlante sensoriale dei prodotti alimentari, Tecniche Nuove, Milano, Italia, 2012.

The most important ISO norms issued in the field of sensory analysis of foods.

Last but not least, inspiring excerpts may be drawn from the following text:

Traditional Foods - General and Consumer Aspects (2016), Kristbergsson K. & Oliveira J. Eds., Springer, New York.

Teaching methods

Teaching methods

At the very beginning of this course, lectures will have a “formal” look, slowly changing towards more interactive ways, in order to keep students'attention alive and awaken and to make the act of learning much easier and more natural.

Great emphasis will be given to the supervised work students will be able to do, especially in order to become semi-trained panellists and to outline the sensory profile of a group of animal foods.

N.B.: students with special needs are kindly invited to contact the teacher by e-mail in order to explain them and to organize both lessons and examinations as best as possible.

Assessment methods

“Traditional” examination: students have to take a 25-30 min. oral examination, during which they are expected to answer two to three questions related to quality problems (and how to prevent/solve them) in meat, seafoods, milk, honey and pertinent derived products.

In details, here is the possible score grid for oral examinations I would like to adopt in the near future:

- a very thorough knowledge of the topics addressed in the course, together with high skills of critical analysis, connection and a sure command of specific terminology will be evaluated with the maximum score (30-30L);

- a thorough knowledge of the topics addressed in the course, together with good analytical and critical skills and the possession of a sure command of specific terminology will be evaluated with good marks (27-29);

- a technically adequate preparation and a sufficient analytical capacity, even if not particularly articulated, expressed in a correct language, will produce fair evaluations (23-26);

- sufficient preparation and capacity for analysis, expressed in a language which is barely formally correct, will determine the sufficiency (18-22).

As an alternative, students are allowed to prepare and discuss a sound technical report around a complex issue concerning animal foods quality, provided the central theme has been previously selected together with the teacher. Instructions to be followed as well as excellent examples will be made available timely.

Teaching tools

Videoprojector, PC, laboratories.

Office hours

See the website of Anna Badiani