Systematic Review of Methods Used for Food Pairing with Coffee, Tea, Wine, and Beer

The current article is aimed at systematically reviewing the research methods used for food pairing with coffee, tea, wine, and beer. The primary aim of this review was to elucidate the state-of-the-art methods used for analysing food and beverage pairings with coffee, tea, wine, and beer; secondarily, to identify the basis of the selection criteria; and lastly, the method used to evaluate those pairings. The search was performed in three databases: Web of Science, ScienceDirect, and Scopus. Criteria for inclusion were studies with an experimental design, a descriptive analysis (DA), and/or hedonic consumer analysis of beverage and food pairing. The outcome had to be measured on a hedonic Likert scale, a line scale, a just about right (JAR), or a modified JAR scale or other relevant scale measurement method for the given attribute. A total of 24 studies were included in this review—the majority aimed at finding good food and beverage pairings. Most pairings were based on suggestions from experts on popular/common, similar origin, or quality of beverages and foods. The outcomes were measured in several different scales, precluding a direct comparison. The 24 articles used in this review did not provide a so-called “golden standard” of the pairing method. Only three articles provided a more scientifically based approach to investigate why a food and beverage pairing is perceived as a good match, using aromatic similarity, the primary taste, and the sensation of koku as their experimental factors

Pairing coffee with basic tastes and real foods changes perceived sensory characteristics and consumer liking

Coffee has, like wine and beer, a wide aroma spectrum, yet coffee-food pairings have not found their way into the menu of fine restaurants and the scientific literature. It is still unknown why certain beverage-food pairings are a match. The aim of this study is twofold: first, we characterize four coffees by sensory descriptive analysis (DA) where assessors evaluated samples before and after tasting aqueous solutions representing five basic tastes (BT); secondly, we investigate consumers’ liking of the same four coffees, both in isolation and when paired with a sweet or savory food. The DA results showed that exposure to all BT influenced the subsequent perceived attribute intensity of coffee; however, the direction of the effect was dependent on the BT, the coffee, and the specific sensory attribute. Most sensory attribute intensities decreased after exposure to the BT, only exposure to the BT bitter increased the intensity of more attributes than it decreased. The consumer test showed that preference for the coffee were mostly related to intrinsic characteristics of the samples as over half of the data variance in consumer liking (56%) related to the difference between samples described by fruity, floral and berry attributes, and samples described by chocolate, nutty and sweet attributes. Pairing coffee with either sweet or savory food accounted for an additional 20% of the variance in liking. Drivers of liking were sample-specific, with one common denominator: when consumers perceive the coffee as sour, they liked it significantly less. Overall, with respect to coffee-food pairing, coffee characterized as having chocolate, nutty, sweet notes are more suitable to be paired with food than coffees characterized as fruity, floral, berry