Résumé
Sensory panellists are often asked to make intensity judgments for a sensory attribute of a stimulus. However, it is well known that a multidimensional stimulus entails this judgment, and could lead to a carryover effect of the intensity of sensations as a function of the number of available attributes. This phenomenon has been called the “dumping” effect and could especially appear as a methodological issue in cross-modal interactions studies. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of the number of attributes on the rating of a target attribute (saltiness) of several variants of a food-product and to assess the extent to which dumping affect judgment between variants. Nine variants of cream cake were chosen in this study. They differed by the presence of ham (no, small pieces, large pieces) and by salt concentration (2 levels), and were evaluated in three conditions. In the first condition, 102 naive panellists rated the nine variant using a single scale: saltiness. Then, 98 panellists were recruited after a selection test based on their capacity to use rating scales and to perceive 3 different concentrations of tastes and aromas in quark. One half of this panel participated, to the second condition, in which 4 attributes were available (salty, sweet, aroma intensity and ham pieces size) whereas, in the third condition, the other half used 8 attributes (salty, sweet, sour, bitter, umami, ham and emmental aroma intensity, and ham pieces size). ANOVA results revealed a significant influence of rating condition on reported saltiness (F=25.1, p<0.0001) as well as a significant difference between products for this attribute (F=17.9, p<0.0001). However, no significant interaction was observed between these two factors indicating that, even if dumping occurs in the profiling of the multidimensional stimuli, it does not affect the discrimination between products.