Passage One  Sensory Evaluation of Food

A Polish proverb claims that fish, to taste right, should three times¡ªin water, in butter and in wine. The early efforts of the basic scientists in the food industry were directed at improving the preparation, preservation, and distribution of safe and nutritious food. Our memories of certain foodstuffs eaten during the World War II suggest that, although these might have been safe and nutritious, they certainly did not taste right nor were they particularly appetizing in appearance or smell. This neglect of the sensory appeal of foods is happily becoming a thing of the past. Bow, in the book ¡°Principles of Sensory Evaluation of Food,¡± the authors hope that it will be useful to food technologists in industry and also to others engaged in research into problem of sensory evaluation of foods. An attempt has clearly been make to collect every possible piece of information, which might be useful, more than one thousand five hundred references being quoted. As a result, the book seems at first sight to be an exhaustive and critically useful review of the literature. This it certainly is, but this is by no means is its only achievement, for there are many suggestions for further lines of research, and the discursive passages are crisply provocative of new ideas and new ways of looking at established findings.