Masking and Synergy of Sensory Indicators of Product Quality

The article presents an overview of methods for improving the sensory characteristics of food, beverages and dishes: masking and synergy. Masking is understood as hiding undesirable or obviously negative characteristics of products by taste, smell, appearance. To mask the undesirable taste and smell, the most widely used flavor and aroma compositions, which allow not only to block the negative characteristics, but also to give the product a new taste and smell. The use of salt, sugar and its analogues, seasonings, triglycerides with a high content of fatty acids help to hide the taste negative characteristics. In pharmaceuticals, the most common way to mask the bitter taste of a drug is to encapsulate or cover the drug with polymers that block the interaction of taste receptors and the bitter compound. Masking the appearance of food products is primarily achieved by the use of dyes. Synergy is understood as an increase in the intensity of sensation (taste, smell, appearance, texture) as a result of the joint action of several modalities. It has been shown that taste and smell have a strong synergistic effect and often determine the quality of food products. Adding small amounts of salt, sugar, and food acid to a product, dish, or drink at the level of sensation thresholds allows you to enhance both the taste and aroma perception of the product. The taste sensations can also be affected by the color of the product: red and orange products are perceived more sweet, yellow with a lemon tint gives a feeling of sourness of the product, green-freshness and brown and black-increases the feeling of bitterness. The structure of a dish or drink affects the taste and olfactory indicators, so the flavor of the product is formed from the joint sensations of taste, aroma and tactile sensations in the oral cavity. The conducted marketing research on the influence of sound on taste sensations showed: so a crunchy cucumber is perceived as more delicious than a less crunchy one, and the crunch of chips is directly associated with their quality indicators.