Old, new, or borrowed – the role of familiarity and cross-cultural recipe integration in the liking and choices of fish products

Food cultures evolve as they absorb new influences while retaining aspects of their origins. Blending cultural influences with traditional foods gives rise to new cuisines with familiar and exotic elements. In this study, we aimed to seek influence from other fish-centric cultures to develop dishes that blended local fish with international flavors.

In Sub-study I, the pleasantness and familiarity of commercial fish products were compared with developed prototypes in a consumer sensory evaluation (n = 100). In Sub-study II, one of the prototypes was used as an ingredient in developing new dishes with elements from Basque, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, and Mexican food cultures, with a traditional Finnish ingredient. A twice repeated consumer sensory evaluation (n = 93) of the new dishes was conducted in a multisensory dining context.

The Sub-study I showed that pleasantness of some of the fish products increased with increasing familiarity. This was seen especially in the case of commercial and prototype pickled Baltic herring; their pleasantness was higher among the frequent users of traditional pickled fish. In Sub-study II of the new dishes Nachos had the highest overall liking in the first and second sensory evaluation (mean scores 6.38 and 6.42 out of 7, respectively). It was also found that in the case of new products, consumers relied on appearance and impression, whereas with familiar products, choice was based rather on sensory perception. Moreover, we were able to develop liked products by combining a traditional but nowadays less popular ingredient with elements from global food cultures.