Making a cup of coffee and reading a small book in your spare time is one of the great pleasures of life, but more fastidious people may be more concerned about the taste of the coffee. The team found that the shape of the container used to drink coffee may affect the drinker's expectation of taste in the latest publication of Food Quality and Preference.
In the study, the authors recruited 309 subjects from China, Colombia and the United Kingdom and asked them to evaluate the possible aroma, bitterness, temperature and willingness to buy coffee in eight different shapes of coffee cups.
It is found that the diameter and height of the coffee cup may indeed affect the expected aroma, bitterness, and the cost that the buyer is willing to pay for the coffee in the cup. The results show that compared with smaller coffee cups, the larger the diameter of coffee cups is, the sweeter the observers' expectation of coffee taste is; in addition, compared with higher coffee cups, the expected taste of shorter coffee cups may be more bitter.
The study is published in Food Quality and Preference, Vol. 56, pp. 201-211.
