Patent ID: 8751429

Claim:
A personal taste assessment system, comprising: a database comprising trait values for a plurality of candidate consumable items; programming instructions embodied in a non-transitory computer-readable medium that, when executed, are configured to instruct an electronic device to: output a user interface to a person, and receive, via the user interface, a rating set comprising the person's ratings for each of a plurality of rated consumable items, wherein at least a portion of the received ratings comprise item ratings rather than ratings of traits; and additional programming instructions stored in a non-transitory computer-readable medium that, when executed, are configured to instruct a processor to develop a preference model for the person based on the received ratings by: identifying the candidate consumable items in the database that correspond to the rated consumable items, retrieving, from the database, a value for at least one trait for each of the candidate consumable items that correspond to the rated consumable items, identifying at least one pattern of dependency between at least one of the retrieved trait values and at least one of the received item ratings, and determining the preference model, based on the at least one pattern of dependency.