Contribution to the understanding of consumers’ creaminess concept: A sensory and a verbal approach

Creaminess is an integrated term, which is reported to depend on textural properties, fattiness, flavour and pleasantness of food products. We aimed to determine whether consumers weight these attributes similarly or not when assessing creamy products. To determine this, sensory properties of 12 dairy products were characterized by a trained panel. Then, new consumers rated the creaminess and their liking for these products, and wrote down their own definition of creaminess. A cluster analysis done on the consumers’ creaminess scores revealed three clusters, which were characterized through correlation with trained panel data, liking data and definition data. For all clusters, consumers used words related to texture and pleasantness when defining creaminess. Nevertheless, from verbal and sensory data, product properties underlying creaminess construct vary among clusters. While a first cluster put emphasis on texture, a second one put emphasis on fattiness and natural flavour, and a last put emphasis on sweetness.