Free Sorting and Association Task: A Variant of the Free Sorting Method Applied to Study the Impact of Dried Sourdough as an Ingredienton the Related Bread Odor.

This paper presents a new variant of the free sorting method developed to analyze the relationship between dried sourdough (DSD) and corresponding DSD-bread (bread) odors. The comparison of DSD and bread sensory characteristics is complicated due to their specific features (for example, acidity for DSD and a characteristic "baked bread" aroma for breads). To analyze them at the same time, this study introduces a new variant of the free sorting method, which adds an association task between DSD and bread after those of free sorting and verbalization. This separation makes it possible to change the product between tasks. It was applied to study the impact of 6 European commercial DSDs on their related DSD-bread. According to our results, this methodology enabled an association between different kinds of products and thus underlined the relationship between them. Moreover, as this methodology contains a verbalization task, it provides product descriptions. Compared with the standard free sorting method, free sorting with an association task gives the distance (i) between DSDs, (ii) between breads, and (iii) between DSDs and breads. The separation of product assessment through sorting and association avoids the separation of products according to their category (DSD or bread).