Extrinsic hand-feel textures and oral-somatosensory texture ratings of a composite food: A study with monaka ice cream

Flavor perception is a multisensory process in which extrinsic sensory cues from non-gustatory modalities shape food experience. Although most research has focused on in-mouth processing, product packaging provides continuous and nondiagnostic haptic information that has been associated with oral perception of food through sensation transference. However, the influence of extrinsic texture remains underexplored in composite foods with distinct textural layers. To address this gap, the present exploratory study investigated whether the oral–somatosensory ratings and hedonic evaluation of monaka ice cream, a composite food featuring a crispy outer wafer and a smooth vanilla ice cream interior, vary with the hand–feel texture held during tasting. In Experiment 1, twenty-four participants evaluated the tactile properties of eight materials (the bare Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene holder: ABS, Antislip sheet, Lead, Felt, Sandpaper, Cotton, Double-sided tape, and the product’s own packaging film), confirming a broad distribution of tactile properties. In Experiment 2, the same participants tasted monaka ice cream while holding each material and rated crispness, oral-somatosensory properties, taste, and overall preference. Crispness ratings were significantly higher in the Lead condition than in the Cotton and Antislip sheet conditions, whereas smoothness and softness ratings were higher in the Cotton condition than in the Sandpaper condition. These differences suggest that extrinsic hand–feel cues are associated with static oral texture ratings of a composite food. Preference ratings were higher in the Felt condition than in the Double-sided tape and Antislip sheet conditions, without accompanying differences in specific oral texture ratings. These findings extend cross-modal flavor perception research to composite foods and suggest that packaging texture can be a factor in the perceived quality of composite foods.