From consumption behaviour to sensory measurement: Sensory characterization of the perceived flavour complexity of a chocolate dessert experience

The fresh dairy dessert category comprises a growing number of bi-layered products. These products can be considered as more complex than other dairy desserts because of their heterogeneity and the multiplicity of sensations they evoke. In this study, we set out to sensory characterize some bi-layered chocolate desserts and find the sensory determinants of their perceived complexity. To do this, we adapted the sequential profiling method to assess sensory attributes covering the full consumption of the dessert. This adaptation was based on the observation of consumers’ eating styles during a first experiment. We observed that most consumers ate bi-layered chocolate desserts in spoonfuls composed of both layers, with different proportions of top and bottom layer. From these observations, we specified a standardized eating pattern representative of this behaviour. In a second experiment, seven commercial bi-layered chocolate desserts were evaluated by a panel trained to follow this eating pattern, and using the adapted sequential profiling. This evaluation showed the evolution of the sensory perception of bi-layered products from the first to the last spoonful. Perceived complexity data identified three groups of panellists based on their complexity scores. These groups matched three different ways to define ‘perceived complexity’ in a chocolate bi-layer dessert. We also observed that perceived complexity could be related to the richness of the sensations perceived, and specifically to the maximum number of salient attributes and the fluctuation of dominant attributes during the sequence of spoonfuls.