Taste analysis. How practice in an industrial and scientific context shapes sturdy sensory categories.

Sensory analysis presents the particular characteristic to be placed in a crossroad, especially when it is about taste. Sensory, which is the most of the time the space of subjective and hedonic judgments, meets Science, which has the main goal to establish an objective truth, through sturdy and stable categories. I followed several types of sensory expert panels, and among them a panel who has the mission to discriminate different sorts of carrots and define their respective sensory profile. The judges were specifically teached and trained to taste and analyze carrots. I was interested to observe the period of training to understand how those people had acquired their expertness. In this presentation, I would tempt an analysis of how participants build themselves the tools and tricks to perform a best organoleptic perception, and how they go beyond the rules and formal process to answer to the forms.