What do you do, when you want to taste a lot of vegetables that need to be cooked first?
I want to make this thread to help out @ThomasPicard with some good ideas for how he can do tastings for his 400 squash he harvested for that purpose this year. He will assemble a big crowd and will get some help too. The French are always better at this collectivity thing, dammit!
The more they’ll be able to taste the fruit, the more excellent the next generation will be.
I can’t say I’ve done anything in that quantity, but have learned some lessons in the range of 30-40 different samples ready to taste for people. I’ve done this procedure for carrots and squash with colleagues for Future Heirloom and squash tasting days at the culinary school I work at.
Our procedure depends on industrial grade ovens, but you could do something similar if you have steam. Here in steps:
Cut in dice (squash). Just enough for everyone to be able to sample. You don’t need to use the whole squash, as it will take way too much space.
Put each sample in its own container with a label on it (1,2,3,4,5…)
Place samples in perforated gastro trays and put the containers somewhere in the same order as you put the samples on the trays, so you know which ones correspond to which.
In a large oven, we can cook about 10-20 samples at a time.
This way you could probably do a high sample size. The problem might be that people lose their sense of objectivity if they taste that many squash (I’m just assuming, you should definitely try).
When tasting, there are a number of ways to collect the data. When I’m with a small class and a small sample, I just do it orally and we put the good ones in one place and the others in another. With larger samples, I’ve done a piece of paper for every sample. Then people can write notes and give a grade for each sample as they pass by.
I’ve learned that having a really tight mise-en-place before doing it helps to not lose overview and get overwhelmed. The tasting in itself can be really fun and loose, but you don’t want to mix up the samples during the prep - then you’ll not know which seed or half carrot correspond to which sample. Doh!
Any other good ideas? What do you do, when you want to taste a lot of vegetables that need to be cooked first? I want to learn too.
With my sweet potatoes I cut similarly sized pieces from each one and imprint identification on a piece of aluminum foil pinned on with a toothpick. They are simply baked without any additives.
Usefulness for French fries, fried like potatoes, making pies and so on are mostly discernable just by the dry bake test. For example, if one is still firm when others are soft and especially if it isn’t very sweet, then it will be good as a replacement for potatoes in lots of dishes. If one is mushier that others and very sweet, it’s good for pie, or even cake.
Don’t know how helpful this is though because I’m only testing maybe fifteen or twenty varieties. With a hundred maybe you could send some home with each of the testers, one variety at a time along with the little score cards and collect the cards up early the next spring.
Thanks a million Malte!!! Many tips in your post.will let you know how I design the taste test. Until now cooking was not the main option, as I felt that with that many squash I had to skip it, but definitely I should not, even if it takes a 2 days marathon. Thinking about a plancha to do that, with thinner slices, maybe a big plancha I could rent, like this one:
On this particular point an expert in melon and watermelon breeding (Xavier Dubreucq) said to me that we should not give evaluation the first time we taste a fruit but the second time: so he advised me, with about 20 watermelons to taste, that people should taste each watermelon in line the first time and then really evaluate each when tasting the second time
This could also be an opportunity to write down flesh color and brix. You could even take photos of each squash (inside and outside) to see if anything stands out.
I’m especially curious to see if brix correlates with taste.
I read on a link posted here that freezing then unfreezing a piece of squash helps with getting the juice needed to measure Brix. Otherwise it’s pretty easy to do, all you need is a brix refractometer which cost around 20 euros.
Make sure noone knows about the Brix results during the taste test to avoid any bias.
If brix does end up correlating with taste, this will be valuable information for future selection.
I can’t go through the freezing and then measuring of brix, too long, too complicated with 400 squash. Or if I was willing to, I should zip each one individually in a plastic bag and analyze that later. One new whole day of work + the packing. I have one refractmeter (brix measurer). Or maybe I could take samples of best and worse tasting tonhave a relative correlation, but to me that is not handy, so I may rather skip it. Too much work.
Good to go back to Loy’s publications expressing that high starch contents and high sugars (so brix superior to 11) correlates with good taste. On top of that high dry matter correlates both with long keeping ability and high starch content, and it is specifically this starch content which is converted to sugar in storage progressively. That’s the example given by Alex Stone from the OSU relatively to Tetsukabuto (see video) which is very average tasting at harvest with a brix of 10-11, but with its high starch content the brix/sugar level goes up to 16-18 brix around winter, which makes it a perfect squash with a nice texture.
B.Loy’s say that sugar content helps covering unpleasant tastes.
Makes sense. The freezing does sound like too much work. I wonder if it’s possible to just get juice from a squash without going through freezing. But you have a lot on your plate already! Maybe I’ll experiment with Brix on my harvest, I do have a refractometer somewhere.
I would recommend having people put their grades/scores on a slip of paper and put it inside a box for each tasting.
That way there will be no bias from seeing everyone elses opinions on grading.
I think for such a great project, you have to partner with other people…
If I had to do this, I would go to a culinary school and explain my problem because they are the experts in taste and tasting.
And I’m sure it will end up with a wonderful idea…
You could also do an atypical test :
put 100g of each squash on a field… make a tracking by numbering and label…see which one disappears the fastest with birds, mouse… This will give you a good indication of their nutritional or taste value.
try to break the codes, if you proceed in a different way your squash will be different from other growers
You will be selecting for taste preferences of culinary school people which may differ from the average person.
Same with mice & birds. I’m not sure I would trust the birds.
Everyone has slightly different preferences so it will really depend on who you are selecting for (yourself, general population, or even different regional/cultural preferences)
This is very interesting. I don’t have anything to add about tasting large quantities of squash or (sweet) potatoes or anything like that, just don’t have anough space to grow large quantities.
But I do want to figure out how to taste fava beans while still in green bean phase. I want to select my favas for taste - particularly for a green bean taste because we mostly harvest it at that point for eating. And beans need to be cooked for tasting.
I’m trying to figure out how to mark the plants from which I’ll take just few beans for tasting, and how to mark those beans to connect them to particular plants. That for some 100-ish plants.
For the cooking and tasting part, I figure I’ll have to have a small pot of boiling water and put just few beans at a time, cook them for just a few minutes and then try them.
Anyone have some (better) ideas on it?
And is it ok to discuss this here or should I open another thread?
Take a muffin-tray and put bean samples in each small container. Pour boiling water over and place in oven if they need longer cooking than just the flash blanching. If you have lots of small ramekin, you could do the same thing.
Brilliant! You just solved all of my dillemas, not just for the tasting part, but also how to manage marking of both plants and bean samples and do the work in batches. Thanks a million!
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