A Sensory Analysis of Raw Native, 'Kanza', and 'Pawnee' Pecans

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the appearance, texture, color, and taste of two popular pecan (Carya illinoinensis) clones relative to native pecans in a blind sensory analysis. Subjects tasted the raw pecans acquired from the same farm and evaluated them using hedonic scores. Results suggest consumers prefer the two clones to natives, and most of this preference seems to be related to the pecan size. A crossmodal effect was detected whereby the subjects reported an improved flavor in whole native pecans compared with clones that were cut in half and were thus less visually appealing. Consequently, although a previous study showed that consumers prefer pecans in a hypothetical (nontasting) situation when they are labeled as a "native" as opposed to clones, when the pecans are actually eaten and there are no labels designating the pecan type, they prefer the clones.