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In my experience, scent is far more important; I've *never* had a feeding bite, even from highly aggressive or highly food-motivated species, without the scent of a food item being present. Defensive bites, sure, but never feeding bites.
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I get feeding bites all the time, lol. They come from hungry animals - usually as a result of bad aim (missing the offered prey item, passing the tongs, and catching my hand) or me letting the interval between feedings get too long (I can think of several animals that would lunge at any movement past their enclosure, once their specific time frame was exceeded - the presence of prey items wasn't a factor, they just wanted food). Over the years, I've observed various behaviors at feeding time...including the response to the feeding bucket getting closer and closer to cages/enclosures. Scent vs sight/recognition? I can't say for certain; but monitors, crocodilians, and a variety of snakes have visibly gone into feeding mode as the bucket arrived and the distribution of food commenced. Kind of interesting to watch the building of excitement as I go from cage to cage, or rack to rack.