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Definition and establishment of assessment procedures for mealiness of apple fruits using sensory and instrumental measurements were performed on ‘Boskoop', ‘Cox's Orange Pippin’ and ‘Jonagold’ samples with varying degrees of mealiness. The sensory procedure profiled mealiness as a loss of crispness, hardness, and juiciness, with an increase in the floury sensation in the mouth. High correlations between the sensory descriptors and instrumental parameters was shown through principal component analysis. The instrumental procedures (confined compression of fruit cylinders and acoustic impulse response) gave coefficients of determination for juiciness and crispness of 0.85 and 0.71, respectively. This level of accuracy indicates the possibility of establishing

Three commercial varieties of dessert apples known to be susceptible to varying degrees of mealiness were evaluated by descriptive sensory profiling. In parallel, consumer testing using the repertory grid technique was conducted with consumers representing 5 different European countries. Generalized Procrustes Analysis of the repertory grid data suggested a cross-cultural consensus with respect to consumer perception of mealiness. In particular, mealiness was associated with the texture of Cox apples. Curved box-plots, an innovative extension of ordinary box-plots, was used to explore the consumers' use of descriptive attributes. This indicated that although consumers perceived mealiness similarly, they described their perceptions differently.