Aroma perception in dairy products: the roles of texture, aroma release and consumer physiology. A review.

Abstract

Aroma perception is a determinant factor in food choices and acceptability by consumers. To be perceived, aroma compounds must be released in the mouth during food breakdown, transferred into the nasal cavity to reach the olfactory receptor and then be perceived. So, in order to control aroma perception, knowledge of the main factors that can influence in-mouth aroma release is of major importance. Focusing on dairy products, this review article investigates the factors due to: (i) food products, and mainly the influence of food composition and structure on aroma retention and release; (ii) the interindividual variability of subjects, mainly chewing behaviour, saliva rate and composition and their influence on aroma release; and (iii) the interactions between food products and subjects and their impact on aroma release and perception. We also discuss the various instrumental and sensory methodologies that are often used to study aroma-texture interactions in dairy products, with particular focus on articles that compare in vivo aroma release and perception in dairy products. This review emphasizes that the relationship existing between in vivo aroma release and perception in dairy products is strongly dependent on the type of texture relative to two mechanisms; physicochemical mechanisms based on the modification of aroma release and a cognitive mechanism based on aroma-taste-texture interactions. These two mechanisms exist simultaneously but have more or less impact on aroma perception, depending on the type of texture.

Colour, rheology, flavour release and sensory perception of dairy desserts. Influence of thickener and fat content

“…Directly, fat plays an important role in flavour as a solvent for lypophilic compounds and, indirectly, due to its influence on product texture. Previous studies have shown the influence of milk fat content and aroma-compound lipophilicity on flavour release in dairy desserts (Gonz alez-Tom as, Bayarri, Taylor, & Costell, 2007 , 2004) and all of them show greater retention of lipophilic compounds parallel to increasing fat content. However it is less clear how thickener type and concentration influence aroma, taste release and perception.…”

“…Also, adding food thickeners is believed to increase texture and decrease aroma and taste intensity, although these effects seem to be dependent on thickener type (Bayarri, Rivas, Izquierdo, & Costell, 2007;Guinard & Marty, 1995;Hollowood, Linforth, & Taylor, 2002). Differences in how thickener type and concentration affect perceived flavour, taste and texture in dairy systems can be explained not only by their contribution to product structure and rheology, but also by their influence on the product matrix transformation during oral processing (Arancibia, Costell, & Bayarri, 2013;Engelen & van der Bilt, 2008;Gierczynski, Guichard, & Laboure, 2011). Starch and carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) are the most widely used thickeners in dairy desserts.…”

Interaction of aroma compounds with food matrices

“…As already reviewed (Gierczynski et al, 2011), the effect of changes in matrix composition does not always induces the same effects on sensory perception. For example, if an increase in viscosity seems to induce a decrease in aroma perception in model systems (Baines and Morris, 1987), the addition of starch to yoghurts was not seen to affect aroma intensity (lemon-lime or strawberry), whereas, the lemon-lime flavour was preferred in thick textured yoghurt and no effect on preference was observed with the strawberry flavour (Brennan et al, 2002).…”

“…There is a lot of data in the literature on the interactions between aroma compounds and the food matrix in dairy products (Gierczynski et al, 2011). A comparison of the retention of seven aroma compounds in different model foods in comparison to water, yoghurts (Saint-Eve et al, 2006), model gel matrices (Savary et al, 2006) and reconstituted milk and model cheeses (Gierczynski et al, 2007) is presented in Figure 13.3.…”

Relating the effects of protein type and content in increased-protein cheese pies to consumers’ perception of satiating capacity

“…29 Finally, the terms related with uses such as "I would eat it as a snack" and "I would eat it as a dessert" were placed in the right side of the X-axis, opposite "If I eat the whole pie I will not be hungry for a long time". These two mechanisms exist simultaneously but have more or less an impact on the aroma perception depending on the type of texture.…”