Discrimination Testing in Flavors and Fragrances

This chapter, entitled "Discrimination testing in flavors and fragrances: a practical view," focusses on the particularities that a sensory scientist must deal with when working with flavors and fragrances. The first part of the chapter focusses on general considerations of the methodologies applicable to flavors and fragrances. The second part is dedicated to flavor applications (product – stimuli, applications, case studies). The third part focusses on fragrance applications, but the authors share different images of the testing conditions to help the reader better understand day-to-day discriminative testing in fragrances. The fourth and fifth sections are dedicated to two special subjects: social responsibility in discrimination testing (always related to flavor and fragrances) and the important aspects of working with visually impaired panelists and persons with vulnerable social conditions. Lastly, we describe what the future might look like for discrimination testing, covering two future applications: social and environmental challenges, and machine learning and artificial intelligence applied to sensory science for discriminative testing.