Tasting skills: putting flavour into words

Tasting is a skill, not a gift. A product person tastes in order, look, smell, bite, chew, swallow, then waits for the aftertaste, and writes it down in a vocabulary the whole team understands the same way. A good note always compares with a reference sample and says how much more or less, so that the partner facility knows what to change. This article is for people who want to work in R&D or marketing at a snack company and have never sat down to taste seriously.

Taste in order

Without an order, the first impression swallows everything else. We follow the same five steps for every sample:

• Look: colour, evenness of colour, a glossy or dry surface, cracks, whether the seasoning is spread evenly.
• Smell: the aroma before the bite. Roasted, buttery, the sea note of seaweed, burnt, stale oil.
• Bite: the sound and the force of the first bite. Shattering, hard crunch, soft, chewy.
• Chew: how the flavour opens up, whether sweet or salty arrives first, how the texture changes as you chew.
• Swallow and wait: how long the aftertaste lasts, whether it is pleasant or harsh, what lingers in the mouth.

Between samples, drink plain water and pause for a few seconds. Taste too many samples in a row and the tongue tires, and the last notes stop being trustworthy.

A vocabulary that is enough

You do not need elegant words. You need words that someone at the facility understands immediately:

• Basic tastes: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami, the savoury depth that comes from ingredients such as cheese or seaweed.
• Aroma: roasted, toasted, buttery, cacao, nutty, marine, burnt, rancid, packaging smell.
• Texture: shattering, hard crunch, airy, chewy, sticks to the teeth, dry, greasy, gritty, soft.
• Aftertaste: short, long, clean, harsh, lingering sweet, lingering salty, lingering bitter.
• Degree: light, medium, clear, strong. Or simpler still: more, less, same as the reference.

The whole team uses the same list. When two people write hard crunch, they mean the same thing. That is why the shared list matters more than anyone's personal vocabulary.

Writing notes a facility can act on

The least useful note is tastes better. The most useful note is sweetness one step below the reference, roast more pronounced, crumbles at the cut edge. We follow four rules:

• Compare with the reference. Every tasting session has a reference sample on the table, either the approved version or a benchmark product. The note says where the new sample departs from it.
• State the degree. More or less, and by how much on the scale we agreed.
• State where and when. Bitterness in the aftertaste is different from bitterness on the first bite. Soft in the middle of the bar is different from soft at the edge.
• Separate observation from preference. Bitterness more pronounced is an observation. I do not like bitterness is a preference. The facility needs the first line. Whoever decides needs both.

Each note asks for one change. Send five requests at once and the next sample will differ in five places, and nobody will know which change produced the result.

An example: a note on a nut bar sample

Suppose today brings version three of a cashew bar for Natural & Healthy, sitting next to the approved version two as the reference. A note ready to send to our partner facility looks like this:

• Look: colour matches the reference, cleaner cut face.
• Smell: roast one step stronger, no burnt note.
• Bite: harder than the reference, more force needed on the first bite.
• Chew: sweetness the same, cashew clearer, slightly sticky in the middle of the bar.
• Aftertaste: clean, shorter than the reference.
• One proposed change: keep the roast level, reduce the pressing so the bar is less hard, then retaste for stickiness.

This note takes two minutes to write. The facility reads it and knows exactly what to do in the next batch. That is the standard we hope a newcomer reaches after the first few weeks.

How to practise

Taste one thing on purpose every day, breakfast included. Write three lines. Compare with last time. Taste blind when you can, meaning cover the labels so you do not know which sample is which, because the eyes like to decide before the tongue does. Read other people's notes on the same sample to calibrate your words against theirs. After a few dozen sessions the tongue picks up differences you could not find at the start.

If you would like to work somewhere an afternoon can mean three versions of the same bar and a notebook of tasting notes, have a look at the cracker R&D and marketing leader roles on our Careers page. We do not ask whether you have a special palate. We ask whether you will keep the notes.