# Sensory Acceptance and Characterisation of Turmeric- and Black-Pepper-Enriched Ice Cream
## 3 Results and Discussion
### Sensorial Characterisation of Turmeric-Flavoured Ice cream
#### 3.3.1 Just-About-Right (JAR) and Penalty Analysis
The dashed quadrant represents the decrease in overall liking score for more than 1 point by more than 20% of consumers. C—control sample; T0, T1, T2—samples with 0.5%, 1.0%, and 2.0% of turmeric; p—samples with added 0.02% black pepper. The attributes contained in the upper-right quadrant of the penalty plot (when at least 20% of consumers rated attributes with non-JAR, decreasing overall liking by more than 1 point) represented the greatest impact on the mean drop in acceptance. Generally, most of the flavoured ice cream samples were penalised for the same attributes: too much taste, aftertaste, and aroma. Comparing PA plots of T0 and T0p samples, it can be concluded that black pepper supplementation had a positive effect on the perception of the intensity of the tested attributes of ice cream with 0.5% turmeric powder. This eventually translated to the highest overall liking score among fortified ice creams. Samples with higher spice addition demonstrated similar PA plots, where more than 40% of participants for samples with medium turmeric concentration (T1 and T1p), and almost 80% of participants for samples with maximum turmeric level (T2 and T2p) significantly decreased their overall liking score for too intensive taste, aftertaste, and aroma. The addition of turmeric and curcumin gives a pungent and bitter flavour, especially when it is found in food in high concentrations as reported [PERSON] et al. [70] and [PERSON] [75]. Turmeric powder is preferred in meat and fish products as well as sour and salty foods [76; 77] because its characteristic aroma is more evident when paired with foods that contain a mild or sweet taste [78]. Also, these two samples denoted too high intensity of colour and bitterness, which was observed by more than 60% of the subjects. However, this deviation of those attributes from the ideal value is not penalised with a significant decrease in acceptance. This is contrary to the results of a study of the addition of turmeric to milk [79] where it was concluded that turmeric supplement leads to a decrease in consumer preference because of their dark yellow colour. Despite expectations, none of texture attributes significantly affected the decrease in overall liking. Although too intensive aroma and taste, and the aftertaste of turmeric have significantly reduced the acceptability rating, turmeric-fortified ice creams, except the T2p sample, were still acceptable (Table 3). The JAR results indicate that the ideal concentration of turmeric powder to ice cream (with or without black pepper) is 0.5%, as a significant proportion of respondents evaluated the intensity of taste (50.5% and 61.2%, respectively), aftertaste (46.6% and 61.2%, respectively), bitterness (62.1% and 73.8%, respectively) and aroma (61.2% and 68.9%, respectively) of the T0 and T0p sample just-right (Figure S5), and additionally more than 80% of respondents consider the product acceptable (ratings higher than 5.0 on a nine-point hedonic scale; Table 3).