Haptic exploration of plateware alters the perceived texture and taste of food
Abstract
We report two naturalistic citizen science experiments designed to highlight the influence of the texture of plateware on people’s rating of the mouthfeel and taste of food (specifically, biscuits) sampled from that plateware. In the first experiment, participants tasted a biscuit from a pair of plates, one having a rough and the other a smooth finish. In the second experiment, participants tasted biscuits and jelly babies; participants rated the mouthfeel and taste of the two foodstuffs. The results both confirm and extend previous findings suggesting that haptically and visually perceived texture can influence both oral-somatosensory judgments of texture as well as, in this case, the reported taste or flavour of the food itself. The crossmodal effects reported here are explained in terms of the notion of sensation transference. These results have potentially important implications for everything from the design of the tactile aspects of packaging through to the design of serviceware in the setting of the restaurant.
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Taste and hedonic evaluation of food and beverages can be influenced by the surface texture of packaging materials, servingware, and the food itself.
“the taste and hedonic evaluation of food and beverages can indeed be influenced by the surface texture of packaging materials [59,132], servingware [46,47] and even the food itself [133].”
From The Role of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Sensory Factors in Sweetness Perception of Food and Beverages: A Review (2019) · cites this paper as [46]
This citation is attached to the servingware portion of the sentence. The General Discussion (p. 10) reports that biscuits tasted different when sampled from rough versus smooth plates, supporting an effect on perceived taste. The study’s reported questions and response options (p. 9) concern taste and mouthfeel, not hedonic evaluations such as liking, so it does not support that part of the claim. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredBiscuits taken from a smoother plate are rated as sweeter and less crunchy than those from a rough plate.
“Biscuits taken from the smoother of the two plates were rated as sweeter and less crunchy than those from the rough plate.”
From The Role of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Sensory Factors in Sweetness Perception of Food and Beverages: A Review (2019) · cites this paper as [46]
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- Authors
- Biggs, L., Juravle, G., & Spence, C.
- Affiliations
- University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (DE)
- University of Oxford (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Juravle, Georgiana
- Venue
- Food Quality and Preference
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2016-06
- Volume
- 50
- Pages
- 129-134
- ISSN
- 0950-3293 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2263782612
- Cited by
- 94
- References
- 28
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 14 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 5
- FWCI
- 18.45
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Food Quality and Preference (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Wellcome Trust Society Award
- AHRC (AH/L007053/1)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Multisensory perception and integration
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Tactile and Sensory Interactions
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Food Science › Sensory Analysis and Statistical Methods
- Keywords
- haptic perception, cross-modal correspondence, taste perception, mouthfeel, food texture perception, cookies
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