1. A method of assessing a person's personal taste, comprising: causing an electronic device to output a user interface to a person; receiving, via the user interface, a rating set comprising the person's ratings for each of a plurality of rated consumable items, wherein at least a portion of the received ratings comprise item ratings rather than ratings of item characteristics; and by one or more processors, developing a preference model for the person based on the received ratings by: accessing a database comprising values of characteristics for a plurality of candidate consumable items, identifying the candidate consumable items in the database that correspond to the rated consumable items, using the received item ratings and the values of characteristics for the candidate consumable items in the database that correspond to the rated consumable items to determine the preference model.