Systematic Review of Methods Used for Food Pairing with Coffee, Tea, Wine, and Beer
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Abstract. Even in a review article the abstract should contain some conclusions of the manuscript after comprehensive review of the articles used.
Line 41 “everything” Too general and in all cases not true.
The work is interesting and in general well-prepared.
I would like to ask the authors to provide more discussion in their manuscript since the majority of the results and discussion section is only presentation of the results.
Please add more discussion and suggestions in section 4 and 5.
Author Response
Reviewer 1
Abstract. Even in a review article the abstract should contain some conclusions of the manuscript after comprehensive review of the articles used.
We have ended the abstract: The 24 articles used in this review did not provide a so-called “golden standard” of pairing method. Only three articles provided a more scientific based approached to investigate why a food and beverage pairing is perceived as a good match, using aromatic similarity, the basic taste and the sensation of koku as their experimental factor
Line 41 “everything” Too general and in all cases not true.
We agree and changed it to “have a great knowledge”.
The work is interesting and in general well-prepared.
Thank you. We also think this is an interesting subject that needs more attention.
I would like to ask the authors to provide more discussion in their manuscript since the majority of the results and discussion section is only presentation of the results.
Please add more discussion and suggestions in section 4 and 5.
We have more than doubled the discussion and added extra and relevant references, also considering the requests of Reviewers 2 and 3.
Reviewer 2 Report
The review paper entitled ”Systematic review of methods used for food pairing with coffee, tea, wine and beer” aimed to elucidate the state of art on food and beverage pairings with coffee, tea, wine and beer, to identify the basis of the selection criteria and, the method used to evaluate those pairings. The paper might be a useful tool for both the professional (researchers, industrials) and unprofessional readers. Still, there are some important aspects the paper does not fulfil for a scientific paper. The number of studies taken in this review is too low (only 24) as you explained in the Abstract. Please explain this.
English proofreading is imposed. There are many spelling and grammar errors.
The number of unscientific references is too high (13 blog/press articles: ref. 1-5, 8-14, 16; 29,5% of the citing references). This is not admissible. Moreover, they are not updated (the last time you accessed them is in 2019, two years ago). This denotes the study contains old material, which is not updated. A review paper must contain, new, relevant, scientifically-based information mostly from peer-reviewed papers. Please solve this aspect in this paper.
The total number of citing references is extremely low for a review paper (44 citing references) and more than 40% of the research/review cited papers are older than the last decade. This is not permitted for a review paper, which must contain only up-to-date information. The older references must be added only as a comparison or to explain the progress in a specific field.
Author Response
The review paper entitled ”Systematic review of methods used for food pairing with coffee, tea, wine and beer” aimed to elucidate the state of art on food and beverage pairings with coffee, tea, wine and beer, to identify the basis of the selection criteria and, the method used to evaluate those pairings. The paper might be a useful tool for both the professional (researchers, industrials) and unprofessional readers. Still, there are some important aspects the paper does not fulfil for a scientific paper. The number of studies taken in this review is too low (only 24) as you explained in the Abstract. Please explain this.
Thank you for the comment, we also think many readers with different backgrounds can benefit from this review.
We agree that 24 studies are not many, however no further studies were found on the food-beverage pairing subject. This is a field not many have confronted scientifically. And we feel this review helps illuminate this lack of a scientific approach to find out why certain food and beverages works well together.
English proofreading is imposed. There are many spelling and grammar errors.
Thank you for this information. For this final version, we have used a professional proofreading service.
The number of unscientific references is too high (13 blog/press articles: ref. 1-5, 8-14, 16; 29,5% of the citing references). This is not admissible. Moreover, they are not updated (the last time you accessed them is in 2019, two years ago). This denotes the study contains old material, which is not updated. A review paper must contain, new, relevant, scientifically-based information mostly from peer-reviewed papers. Please solve this aspect in this paper.
blog/press references 1-5 is used to illuminate the interests on the subject, and to show where most material and information can be found.
blog/press references 7-12 is used to tell the sommelier story. To tell how many other fields have sommelier educations, but not coffee. This is because nestle have trademarked this (reference 13,14).
blog/press references 15,16 is used to tell about the two coffee training programs there exits in close relations to a coffee sommelier education.
We would like to use only scientific-based references; however, they do not exist. We feel this substantiates our claim that there is a need to do scientific studies on the subject since the is only a very limited articles published.
The total number of citing references is extremely low for a review paper (44 citing references) and more than 40% of the research/review cited papers are older than the last decade. This is not permitted for a review paper, which must contain only up-to-date information. The older references must be added only as a comparison or to explain the progress in a specific field.
We have added four more references in the discussion section. You are also right that the number of papers is few, and it underscores the lack of publications on this particular subject.
Since only 24 studies were found on this subject, we decided to include them all, even though some were almost two decades old. That only 24 articles are published within the last two decades reinforces our point that it is an under explored area and hence increases the news value of this article.
Additionally, the strength of this methodology is the rigorous selection of papers following pre-defined inclusion criteria. It is an original use of the systematic reviews methodology (usually applied in medical and nutritional epidemiology research). The unbiased inclusion/exclusion criteria also strengthens the paper despite the perceived relatively low number of papers.
Reviewer 3 Report
The review considers an interesting and under-researched topic, namely the pairing of coffee with foods. Besides anecdotal evidence, there appear not much evidence available in the literature.
Perhaps, it would have been interesting to study the socio-cultural evidence from coffee producing countries, such as Brazil where an interesting cheese bun is often paired with coffee (Pao de Queijo, see refs below). In Mexico, some bakery products based on maize are paired with coffee (corn flour cookies). The obvious foods that are often paired with coffee are also milk and sugar? Is there a sensory hypothesis for the pairing choices, e.g. that the acidity of coffee is balanced with sugar? Which also might explain the pairing with cake in traditional European coffee houses. The discussion, which is very short, could be improved by adding some of these aspects.
The following points might be additionally considered:
Line 79: Can you explain the choice of databases? Sciencedirect is not strictly a database but the portal of a publisher, Elsevier. Why did you not include Springer, Wiley etc as well? Anyway, Scopus and Web-of-Science should cover most of the publisher databases as well. For such a restricted topic, Food Science and Technology Abstracts database (which includes many food journals not in the other databases) as well as Google Scholar might be considered.
Figure 1: the resolution could be improved
Page 5, 3rd column, 2nd line: spelling “recom-mendation”
Line 178: spelling ether
References of pairing Pao de Quejio with coffee:
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.201.4522&rep=rep1&type=pdf
http://periodicos.unifacef.com.br/index.php/facefpesquisa/article/view/19/85
Author Response
Reviewer 3
The review considers an interesting and under-researched topic, namely the pairing of coffee with foods. Besides anecdotal evidence, there appear not much evidence available in the literature.
Thank you and we agree. Not only is coffee and food pairing a new and under-researched topic, the whole field of food-beverage pairing is under-researched.
Perhaps, it would have been interesting to study the socio-cultural evidence from coffee producing countries, such as Brazil where an interesting cheese bun is often paired with coffee (Pao de Queijo, see refs below). In Mexico, some bakery products based on maize are paired with coffee (corn flour cookies). The obvious foods that are often paired with coffee are also milk and sugar? Is there a sensory hypothesis for the pairing choices, e.g. that the acidity of coffee is balanced with sugar? Which also might explain the pairing with cake in traditional European coffee houses. The discussion, which is very short, could be improved by adding some of these aspects.
Thank you for this great comment. We agree that the socio-cultural field is an interesting add-on. Those Brazilian and Mexican food items were in fact some we looked into as ideal pairing matches for coffee, besides cake and chocolate. How sugar and milk affect and compliments coffee in another interesting point that needs to be further investigated.
Even though those foods are traditionally eaten with coffee, and the fact that many people like to use sugar and milk in coffee does not bring us any closer as to why they match. Sure, there is this sensory theory that sugar decreased the bitter taste from coffee and that the fat in milk do hinder the flavor release.
The discussion section has been elaborated taking such points into account as well as those asked by Reviewers 1 & 2.
The following points might be additionally considered:
Line 79: Can you explain the choice of databases? Sciencedirect is not strictly a database but the portal of a publisher, Elsevier. Why did you not include Springer, Wiley etc as well? Anyway, Scopus and Web-of-Science should cover most of the publisher databases as well. For such a restricted topic, Food Science and Technology Abstracts database (which includes many food journals not in the other databases) as well as Google Scholar might be considered.
You are right in all your considerations. The three databases chosen to cover most of the publisher databases. Food Science and Technology Abstracts database could have been a great add on of databases. A preliminary search round was performed and from that it was discovered that those chosen databases covered all of the found articles.
Figure 1: the resolution could be improved
Page 5, 3rd column, 2nd line: spelling “recom-mendation”
Changed
Line 178: spelling ether
Changed to either
References of pairing Pao de Quejio with coffee:
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.201.4522&rep=rep1&type=pdf
http://periodicos.unifacef.com.br/index.php/facefpesquisa/article/view/19/85
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
I agree on the paper publishing in its current form.
Author Response
Thank to Reviewer 2 for their acceptance of the paper
