How to become a great judge of good taste
Medals, stars and trophies can help us to identify the best foods out there. But who decides how – and to whom – they are awarded? Expert arbiter Xanthe Clay shares her essential tips
Food awards are big business. Over the past couple of decades the number has burgeoned. There’s the Soil Association’s (organic) BOOM Awards, the British Pie Awards, the Academy of Chocolate Awards, the Dalemain Marmalade Awards, the British Charcuterie Awards and the British Cheese Awards, not to mention the UK-based World Cheese Awards. And they keep coming: next year is the inaugural World Jam Awards in Helmsley, North Yorkshire.
But while the stickers on jars and packets boasting of prizes, medals, stars and trophies are eye catching, do they actually mean anything? It’s tempting to dismiss awards as paid marketing puff, a comestible version of mail-order degree certificates from Ineverwentto University. What exactly is the point?
In fact, I’ve judged all the awards listed above (fingers crossed for the Jam Awards) and they’ve been rigorous and well run to a fault. The judges, not just flighty food writers but people working in food with decades of experience and in-depth knowledge, take their responsibility very seriously. The debates over the merits – and faults – can be fascinating, and I’m proud to stand by the results.
With shops and supermarket shelves crowded with products, the choice can be bewildering, and a trustworthy awards helps point us shoppers towards the ones which are worth supporting, and even spending a little bit more of our hard-earned cash on.
Still, it’s worth checking out the credentials of the awards before loading your shopping trolley. I once judged a turkey competition where some of the entries were indeed complete turkeys (an “oven ready” turkey roll with a weird squeaky texture was memorable for all the wrong reasons), to the extent that the panel unanimously refused to make an award in one of the categories. We later found out that the event organisers had ignored us, and allocated an award to, yes, that turkey roll.
Look at the website of the awards. Industry awards, like that turkey one, can have a different agenda from the consumer awards, focusing on innovation (processing techniques, say, or shelf-life extending techniques), packaging and mass-market appeal, like salesboosting trendy flavours. Consumer awards – such as those I’ve mentioned – should really be exclusively interested in how delicious the food is.
The best awards do the judging “blind”, so that no one on the panel knows what they are tasting. This means they aren’t swayed by the name, packaging or price, especially important when a posh brand is up against a cheap one.
The granddaddy of food awards is the Great Taste Awards, set up by Bob and Linda Farrand, and now run by their son and daughter-in-law, John and Tortie. Since their inception in 1994 they have assessed over 140,000 products – this year alone saw more than 14,000 entries, tasted blind by 355 judges over 86 judging days. It’s a mind-bogglingly complicated process, with every food or drink, be it cider or sea salt, pork chops or pasta sauce, going to at least two tables of
judges. Three-star winners will have been to at least four tables and given a unanimous thumbs up. I recently sat down with 15 other judges to taste those three-star winners again, in order to pick out the trophy winners (known as the Golden Forks), which will be revealed on October 17. And no, I don’t know who the winners are – it’s still a blind tasting, and all our scores are totted up without revealing the result.
But, I hear you cry, how can anyone make a judgment on how something tastes? After all, taste is subjective. One person’s ideal dinner is another’s idea of food hell. Some taste preferences are genetically programmed, like coriander which can taste either addictively delicious or like a mouthful of soap, depending on your DNA. So how do you decide if something is good or bad?
It turns out that the experts have a pretty rigorous set of rules, as anyone who has entered a jar or a cake into the local show knows. At the Marmalade Awards at Dalemain House in Cumbria I shadowed two Women’s Institute judges, which gave me a pretty keen idea of how amateurs are judged. Some of it is pretty obvious (is the jar clean?), some a bit more hard to fathom (like using a new jar lid, even on recycled jars). But much of the assessment is the same whether the product is commercially made or domestic – is the jam bright and fresh tasting? Is the peel evenly cut?
This sort of knowledge is enviable, and accumulated after years of holding jars up to the light. The team at the Great Taste Awards, meanwhile, have compiled a whole manual on tasting everything from air-dried ham to za’atar. Based on the holy quintet of appearance, aroma, texture and taste, the notes fill a fat book. Here’s a flavour of that advice, along with tips from the experts, to get all of us doing some award-winning tasting.