Week 1 Session: Blind tasting: is freshness real?

This week’s question: is “freshness” an objective physical state, or a cultural myth constructed by modern cold-chain technology?

Before the session#

Read the Rees excerpts. Nothing else to prepare — the materials are supplied, and they need to be, because the whole exercise depends on you not knowing which sample is which.

If you have a dietary requirement or an allergy, email Simone Ravel by Monday so the samples can be adjusted. Nobody should be sitting out the first tutorial.

In the session#

Three samples of the same vegetable, unlabelled:

• A — picked fresh
• B — refrigerated for three days
• C — freeze-dried and rehydrated

Blind tasting (25 min). Taste each and write a description of texture, moisture, smell, colour and taste. Your own words, before any discussion. Do not guess which is which — describe what is actually in your mouth.

The reveal (15 min). We collect the descriptions, then reveal the samples. Two things usually happen: the room agrees strongly about texture and disagrees completely about which one is “freshest,” and several people find they preferred a sample they would have rejected if it had been labelled.

What is freshness? (35 min). Working from those results. Is freshness a measurable property of the food, or a claim made about it? Where did you learn what fresh is supposed to feel like? Rees on the ice trade: at what point did “fresh” start meaning “cold” rather than “recently harvested”?

The semester ahead (15 min). The thesis, and what would have to be true for it to be wrong.

Afterwards#

Keep your three descriptions. They are your own baseline data and several people each year use them in the Critical Essay — the gap between what you tasted and what you expected to taste is exactly the kind of phenomenon that essay wants.

Next week we look at how the appliance was sold.