Colour is one of the main appearance attributes and usually conditions consumer’s acceptance (Clydesdale, 1993).The ranking method may provide a useful alternative to the use of scales for measuring the intensity of an attribute as perceived from different samples. The ranking method makes the panellists judgement easier and the ordinal raw data so obtained can be transformed in an interval scale using Thurstonian scaling methods. The data thus obtained can be used to relate physical intensity and sensory intensity. The aim of this study was to analyse the relationship between instrumental colour parameters and sensory colour intensity perceived in commercial vanilla dairy desserts.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia. Project AGL 2003-005