Sensory analysis of natural table olives: Relationship between appearance of defect and gustatory-kinaesthetic sensation changes

•Sensory characteristics of Italian table olives has been evaluated.•Defect appearance has a negative impact on gustative and kinaesthetic attributes.•PCA identifies similarity and difference between defected and un-defected samples.

In the present study, we evaluated sensory characteristics of table olives of the Italian double-aptitude olive cultivar (Olea europaea L. cv. Itrana) processed as green (Oliva Bianca di Itri) and black (Oliva di Gaeta) table olives, according to the Method for the sensory analysis of table olives of International Olive Council. The sensory attributes evaluated were: a) negative sensations or defects (abnormal fermentations and other defects as butyric, putrid and zapateria, winey-vinegary, soapy, metallic, cooking effects, rancid, musty and earthy defects); b) gustatory sensations (salty, bitter, acid) and c) kinaesthetic sensations (hardness, fibrousness, crunchiness). Multivariate statistical analysis has been used to identify similarities and differences between defected and un-defected samples. We carried out the Principal Component Analysis on two data sets: the first data-set included all sensory parameters (data-set A), while the second data-set did not include abnormal fermentation and other defects (data-set B). The occurrence of negative sensations have a negative impact on gustative and kinaesthetic attributes. The samples classified as “Extra or Fancy” but with intensity of defect >1.0 are more similar to defected samples, also not considering the defects as discriminant parameters.