The Hidden Sides of Sourness Perception: Is Acid just a Basic Taste?
Résumé
In sensory studies, sour taste is considered a basic taste without further considerations. Yet, many foods and beverages are composed of a variety of organic acids with potentially different acidifying power and sensory quality. This is the case for instance in wine, coffee, ramen soup, apple, or apricot. Whether natural, added or produced during fermentation the interactions between different acids have been considered recently as a driver of quality and/or acidification. Depending on the food product or beverage, different acids are empirically used as reference standards to familiarise or train panels for descriptive profiles (e.g., lactic acid for yoghurt or tartaric acid for wine). Based on these observations, this study aimed at determining whether organic acids are different from each other from a sensory perspective. Three series of six tetrad tests comparing varying water solutions of four organic acids (tartaric, malic, citric, and lactic) were performed with a panel of 12 wine professionals. Then, the best water condition was submitted to 110 French wine professionals by combining a descriptive test using the check-all-that-apply method and an identification test. Results showed significant differences at alpha = 0,01% between all acids in an equimolar condition. Each acid was described differently with aromatic (apple, lemon), other taste (bitterness), and somatosensory descriptors (astringency, metallic, bold, roundness, freshness). The identification test showed a high variability of the percentage of correct identification from 41% for citric and tartaric acids to 50% and 59% for respectively malic and lactic acids, with recurring inversions observed between tartaric and citric acids. To conclude, this study highlighted a discrimination between organic acids under water condition with multiple sensory markers, paving the way for possible sensory identification. For the wine field, there are major issues to determine the interaction between acids in the sensory profile in relation to recent regulations.
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