A personal history of sensory science

ABSTRACT

This article traces the history of Sensory Science in America. It starts with the roots of psychophysics in nineteenth-century Germany, following from Weber to Fechner to Wundt to Titchener to Boring and finally to SS Stevens. Next it discusses early discrimination testing at Carlsberg Brewery in Denmark and at Seagram Corporation in the USA. A brief history of the start of hedonic testing at the Chicago Quartermaster’s store by David Peryam will be followed by the start of descriptive testing. Specifically, the work by Jean Caul, Herbert Stone, and Joel Sidel, as well as Elaine Skinner and Gail Civille, is covered. Lastly the seminal effect of Rose Marie Pangborn, and especially her Sensory Evaluation of Food Course on sensory science worldwide, is discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Sensory science
• Rose Marie Pangborn
• University of California, Davis

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Herbert Stone for information on FST 107; Edgar Chambers IV for information on Jean Caul; Axel Borg for information on Maynard Amerine; and Herbert Stone and Joel Sidel for information on themselves. Also thank you to my beta readers, Helene Hopfer, Jake Lahne, and Pauline Lestringant; any errors that remain are mine. I also want to thank John Slate for giving me a paragraph that broke my writer’s block.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. An excerpt from an Edgar Chambers IV e-mail (Chambers, 2018): “Her speech at the 2003 Boston Pangborn, when she was in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s was her last public address. She had been telling people at the retirement community she was going to speak in Boston, but no one believed her until I arrived to help her pack and take her to Boston. The social worker for the retirement community told me I could not be serious—that didn’t I understand she had Alzheimer’s and was not really going to speak at a conference in Boston. I assured her that Jean was speaking at the conference and that we had been working on her speech for several months. She told me I couldn’t be serious; didn’t I know that Jean had even forgotten how to dress appropriately. She said ‘She sometimes even wears a jumper been made from floral curtains!’ I laughed and said she had those made when she left Boston and moved to Manhattan from the curtains in her home. She liked them so much she sometimes wore them to work and I had seen her wear them at professional meetings. The social worker was incredulous!”

2. Jean Caul’s use of the word integers is confusing. We think she meant individual sensory attributes (sweet, floral, astringent, etc.) and that these came together to form a complex sensation.

3. In 1989 ASTM also awarded a Pioneer award to Alina Surmacka Szczesniak, She spent her entire career at GF. Her life story—including studying at underground institutions in Poland during World War II and graduating cum laude from Bryn Mawr College after only a few years in the USA—deserves to be told. The other person awarded a Founder award in 1989 was Howard Schutz. His impact on the field of consumer sensory testing deserves its own manuscript too.

4. When I sent one of the co-editors (Lahne from Virginia Tech. University) of this issue of the journal a copy of Figure 1, he replied to my email with “Amazing! That looks so much like my syllabus. It’s so cool that I rushed out to show it to our current sensory PhD student….”

5. I strongly feel that histories of Howard Moskowitz and Ann Noble should also be added by someone at some point.

Additional information

Funding

There was no external funding associated with this manuscript.

Notes on contributors

Hildegarde Heymann

Hildegarde Heymann is a Distinguished Professor of sensory scientist in the Department of Viticulture and Enology, University of California—Davis. She received a BSc Agriculture degree from the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa and an MS and PhD degree from the University of California—Davis. She was a faculty member at the University of Missouri and has been at Davis since 2003. Hildegarde focuses on sensory evaluation of alcoholic beverages and the use of multivariate statistics to integrate sensory and chemical/instrumental data. She and Harry Lawless are the authors of Sensory Evaluation of Food: Principles and Practices. She also co-authored with Susan Ebeler: Sensory and Instrumental Evaluation of Alcoholic Beverages. She has published over 135 peer-reviewed articles. Correspondence may be sent to [email protected].