16. A method of assessing a person's personal taste, comprising, by one or more processors: receiving a rating set comprising the person's ratings for a plurality of rated consumable item, 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, retrieving, from the database, a value for at least one characteristic for each of the candidate consumable items that corresponds to characteristics of the rated consumable items, identifying at least one pattern of dependency between at least one of the retrieved characteristic values and at least one of the received item ratings, determining the preference model, based on the at least one pattern of dependency, and 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.
16. A method of assessing a person's personal taste, comprising, by one or more processors: receiving a rating set comprising the person's ratings for a plurality of rated consumable item, 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, retrieving, from the database, a value for at least one characteristic for each of the candidate consumable items that corresponds to characteristics of the rated consumable items, identifying at least one pattern of dependency between at least one of the retrieved characteristic values and at least one of the received item ratings, determining the preference model, based on the at least one pattern of dependency, and 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. 20. The method of claim 16 , further comprising, by the one or more processors: receiving identifying information for a consumable item of interest; retrieving, from the database, one or more values of characteristics for the consumable item of interest; processing the retrieved values with the preference profile to determine a predicted rating for the consumable item of interest; and outputting the predicted rating to the person.