For a week every spring and another week every fall, a dozen or so trained citizen taste-testers from the Blackfoot area start off each day being oh-so-careful about what they’re eating and even about what they’re wearing. No chocolate, no coffee, no foods that leave residues in their mouths within an hour of their two very important appointments that day. No perfume either.

by Marlene Fritz

At 10 a.m. and again at 2 p.m., they report to the Bingham County Extension Office, where UI Extension Educator Marnie Spencer and colleagues Janice Stimpson of Fremont/Clark Counties and Lorie Dye of Jefferson County wait for them. They slip into the basement and form a line behind 14 tiny, identical cubicles. Then, Stimpson, Spencer, and Dye pass the panelists trays loaded with baked potato halves, which the tater-tasters hand down the line fire-brigade style until each holds a single tray.

Together, they sit down, pick up a fork, and start evaluating the dozen potato halves—four Russet Burbanks and eight representing four new varieties—each carefully arranged on coded paper plates.

First, they tune their palates

Together they grade the first Russet Burbank sample—UI Extension educators included—to make sure their palates are tuned. Then they dig in—sniffing, tasting, rating on a 1-to-9 scale, sipping spring water, then sniffing again. If they bite into a potato with an unpleasant taste, they eat unsalted crackers to neutralize it. “The panelists are separated so they can’t hear each other say “ugh,” Stimpson jokes.

Ten minutes later, the tater-tasters are on their way home. If it’s the afternoon session, potatoes go home with them—a little added benefit to the modest stipends each receives from the Idaho Potato Commission for a job some have been doing for nearly as long as potato tasting has been going on.

The twice-annual taste panel, launched in fall 1988, is one of a lengthy series of hurdles that potatoes developed through the Aberdeen-based Tri-State Potato Variety Development Program are expected to clear.

“It’s a good reference point for us to use,” says tri-state program coordinator and UI agronomist Jeffrey Stark. “It’s an important piece of information regarding quality and consumer preference that we need to take into account. If the testers  consistently rate a potato poorly, we know we need to take another look at it before we release it.”

Scoring for ‘taste’-ability is part of a 10-year process

“By the time the potatoes get to us, they’ve already been tested for growing ability, disease-resisting ability, and many other characteristics,” says Spencer. “We score them for their ‘taste’-ability. Are they acceptable  products that people will buy if these varieties go on to the marketplace?”

Currently, in-house panels of UI faculty and staff evaluate emerging specialty varieties—such as ones with yellow flesh or purple skin—and Idaho processors run private taste panels for French fry quality.

But the UI’s Blackfoot taste tests focus on white bakers—the kinds of potatoes that have put Idaho’s name on the map. So far, the Blackfoot panelists have scored 38 potential new varieties, 11 of which have eventually been released. Because culinary qualities can be influenced by weather and other factors beyond growers’ control, most of the successful varieties were entered in the taste test for two or three years.

Ensuring that a new potato meets the needs of growers, processors, and consumers takes at least 10 years from the time the first cross is made in the breeder’s greenhouse.

Taste panels weren’t always part of the tri-state potato development process. Consumer complaints about the Russet Norkotah, which performed well in the field, initially spurred the panel’s formation. The Russet Norkotah “tastes too earthy—like a potato cellar”—after it comes out of storage, Stimpson says.

Stark notes that consumer preferences are sufficiently diverse that some     buyers actually like that earthy taste. With replicated, statistically valid results from the Blackfoot taste panel, however, industry representatives will at least know what consumers will be getting.

When salt and pepper are enough

Panelists grade each sample for its color, flavor, and texture. Stimpson says color will ideally be “even and creamy” while flavor might be bitter, bland, earthy, sweet, typical, or “off.”

Texture—mealy, pasty, watery, or dry—is a little tougher to rate.

Stimpson advises tasters to fluff up the potato and take a bite out of the center. If it’s pasty, the sample will stay on their tongues. If it’s watery, they’ll notice a sheen on its surface. If it’s dry, they’ll find they need to drink water immediately afterwards.

“You would think it might be difficult to tell the difference, but it’s not,” says Dye. “When you taste the pure goodness of the potato, each sample is really very different. The panel results show a clear consistency: there are potatoes that taste better, look better, and store better.”

Stimpson credits the taste-testing process with making her a much more discerning—and appreciative—consumer of potatoes. “I rarely put  anything on a potato anymore, if it’s a good potato—just salt and pepper.”

That goes for taste-tester Lyla Morgan, too. “I always order them without topping,” she says. “We’ve learned how a potato actually tastes without the butter. When we go to restaurants, we keep testing.”

Just so preparations; next come microwave tests

To prepare for the panels, Stimpson, Spencer, and Dye get hand-washed potatoes from senior scientific aide Peggy Bain of the UI CALS Aberdeen Research and Extension Center. They poke them with a stainless steel knife that won’t leave brown spots, then bake them for 60 to 70 minutes at 375oF in a commercial convection oven purchased for the project by the IPC. 

So far, they’ve never microwaved them. Stimpson is helping the IPC launch a taste test of microwaved  potatoes, which she recommends be conducted on campus. “Microwaving invariably affects the texture,” she says, “but younger people are more accustomed to it.”

Although they’ve included high-school kids and men on the panel, Stimpson likes the fact that so many of the middle-aged and older female panelists come back season after season, evaluating the same contenders just out of the field and again five months out of storage. “Some people score the samples a little higher and some score them a little lower,” she says. “That’s why we like to keep the same panelists from fall to spring.”

Leah Jones keeps coming back because “my husband retired from Basic American (a local potato processor), my son works for them, and my daughter is a potato salesperson. Potatoes are a lifestyle and an industry in Idaho that’s so important.”

“If we don’t do it right,” adds fellow taster Ann Adams, “there’s a lot at stake.”

Contact Marnie Spencer at marniers@uidaho.edu.

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