Book excerpt: From listing the steps involved in a sensory evaluation project to presenting advanced statistical methods, Sensory Evaluation Techniques, Fourth Edition covers all phases of sensory evaluation. Like its bestselling predecessors, this edition continues to detail all sensory tests currently in use, to promote the effective employment of these tests, and to describe major sensory evaluation practices. The expert authors have updated and added many areas in this informative guide. New to this edition are expanded chapters on qualitative and quantitative consumer research and the SpectrumTM method of descriptive sensory analysis that now contains full descriptive lexicons for numerous products, such as cheese, mayonnaise, spaghetti sauce, white bread, cookies, and toothpaste. Also new in this chapter is a set of revised flavor intensity scales for crispness, juiciness, and some common aromatics. The book now includes an overview of Thurstonian scaling that examines the decision processes employed by assessors during their evaluations of products. Another addition is a detailed discussion of data-relationship techniques, which link data from diverse sources that are collected on the same set of examples. With numerous examples and sample tests, Sensory Evaluation Techniques, Fourth Edition remains an essential resource that illustrates the development of sensory perception testing.