caps were switched, Mathieu would reveal which bottle of
water was used to make each dough, and I would reveal
which number corresponded to which brand.
Key to a Good Tasting #2: Introduce a Control
The concept of a control is a simple one, but one that is
often overlooked. The idea is that you need to include at
least one sample in your tasting for which the answer is
already known. That way, you can be sure that the
experiment went according to plan and that your other
results are reliable. In the case of a double-blind experiment
like this one, it means doubling up on at least one of your
samples. If the results for both are the same, then you have a
pretty strong case that the experiment went according to
plan.
In this case, I doubled up on both tap water and Evian,
making a total of eight water samples. If the testing
procedures were sound, and our palates were as fine-tuned
as I believed them to be, the crusts made with the same
water should be ranked very close to each other in the
tasting.
Key to a Good Tasting #3: Know What You Are Asking
(Isolate Variables)
In Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a
team of scientists builds a supercomputer that is finally able
to answer the Big Question: the Answer to Life, the
Universe, and Everything. The ultimate irony is that when
they’re finally given the answer—forty-two—they realize
that they never really knew exactly what they were asking in