Traveling to a foreign country where one doesn’t speak the language can be frustrating. But a bilingual dictionary might prevent a traveler from taking a lot of wrong turns and wasting precious time.
So it is with food. If a product-development team doesn’t understand what its customers and suppliers are saying, they can waste a lot of staff hours and money. Properly developing and using a lexicon can sidestep many potential problems.
Speaking of lexicons
Webster’s defines a “lexicon” as a dictionary, or the vocabulary of a specific language. In the food industry, a lexicon is a sensory dictionary that allows product designers to speak a common language when describing products. Although used primarily for product development, such lexicons are also valuable tools for innovation, quality control, purchasing and marketing.
Sensory lexicons contain food descriptors and definitions. Each definition can include a food or chemical reference—sometimes both—and a scale to measure strength. “The objective of a lexicon is not to determine likes and dislikes, but rather to define what characteristics are in a food and their intensity,” notes MaryAnne Drake, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Food Science, North Carolina State University, Raleigh.
How does a food manufacturer go about developing a lexicon? “You have to go through the process,” insists Gail Vance Civille, president, Sensory Spectrum, Inc., Chatham, NJ. This involves gathering samples of the food needing description, such as almonds, cheeses or pizzas. “You have to have sufficient samples to encompass and define the category,” she explains. Then you gather together a group of people, taste the product and agree on descriptive terms. These steps produce a lexicon, or language, of food descriptors the entire group can use with the same level of understanding.
Scope it out
To break this process down into a little more detail, start by defining the project’s scope. A lexicon can be developed for one specific food, such as Brand X Thin-Crust Pepperoni Pizza, or an entire category of foods, such as nuts or cheeses. Some lexicons only deal with flavor and aroma characteristics, while others might include categories for taste, texture and appearance.
“When developing a lexicon for a specific food product, one would start with that food,” notes Lauri Rottmayer, 21st Sensory, Inc., Bartlesville, OK. “For example, when describing a pizza, one would want to include samples of various tomato sauces and pastes, various herbs, garlic, various cheeses and crusts.” The lexicon might include 10 terms to describe the sauce, including “garlic,” “tomato” and “licorice-like;” an additional eight terms to describe the crust, such as “white,” “wheat” and “yeasty;” and seven distinct terms for the cheese component.
By contrast, the Almond Board of California, Modesto, recently commissioned Sensory Spectrum to develop a lexicon for almonds. The process started by randomly analyzing 36 different samples of raw almonds from 20 different almond varieties to develop an initial lexicon. They then focused on some specific samples, and then expanded it to include roasted and pasteurized almonds. The final lexicon included aroma terms such as “dark roast” and “benzaldehyde”; flavor aromatics such as “woody,” “raw” and “coconut/lactone”; and texture terms such as “crunch/snap” and “toothpack.”
According to Drake, the dairy industry has also developed several lexicons, including a broader cheese lexicon and a more-specific lexicon for Cheddar cheese.
Civille is working on a lexicon book or disc that would encompass all foods; currently, most lexicons just cover a specific item or group of items. “One can also think of lexicons as wheels,” she explains. “There is a beer wheel and a wine wheel. Within the wine wheel, there might be a fruity section, which could be further broken down into apples, peaches and pears.”
