Sensory profiles of commercial fruit juice drinks: influence of sweetener type

A vocabulary was developed for sensory profiling of fruit juice drinks. The experimental attributes included seven terms for appearance, 16 for aroma, 14 for flavour, six for aftertaste and four for mouthfeel. A panel of 15 trained, external assessors used the vocabulary to rate 12 commercial fruit juice drinks. The test stimuli included juice from blackcurrant, strawberry, apple and mixtures of apple and blackcurrant juice. The drinks were sweetened by natural sugars and by the non-nutritive sweeteners, saccharin, aspartame and acesulphame K. With one exception, every attribute was used by the panel of assessors to discriminate between the fruit juice drinks. Order of tasting effects were found for 25 out of 47 descriptors. Principal component analysis and sensory mapping were used to elucidate the key differences between samples. Differences were found both between fruit types and, to a lesser extent, within fruit types. Sweetener type had a marked influence on the perception of flavour, aftertaste and mouthfeel, irrespective of fruit type. © 1998 SCI.