Gender differences in taste

[Tri2Cook]

I made gianduja ice cream this week to use as part of a dessert I'm working on and got a few people to taste-test it for me. Four male and four female tasters. All seperate from each other so I could hear their uninfluenced opinions.

All four male tasters immediately identified that there was a "nutty" flavor. A couple even said "tastes kinda like nutella".

All four female tasters said "mmmm, chocolate".

I prompted them to elaborate with "anything else?".

"Nope, but it's really good."

"You don't taste anything other than chocolate?"

"Ummm, no. Should I?"

"Hmmmmm."

Now three of the four female tasters are people who taste things for me quite often and have always done a great job, I trust their palates, but they couldn't identify anything but the chocolate. It wasn't due to the formulation, the guys all tasted it immediately.

Edited July 14, 2007 by Tri2Cook (log)

[Dianabanana]

Try your test again in a couple of weeks . . . if you catch my drift. Sometimes a girl just has chocolate on her mind.

[Boodles]

I've also noticed that i get specific gender comments about one of my products.

Males sometimes mention that 'its sweet' - but i dont get that from the females. The females tend to say MMMMmmmm.

Bit of a generalization, but its something i have observed over the last few months when doing food shows.

[Tri2Cook]

Try your test again in a couple of weeks . . . if you catch my drift.  Sometimes a girl just has chocolate on her mind.

←

Good point. Now I'm going to have to find out if that was the case. Should be fun explaining why I'm asking that question.

[Terrasanct]

My husband would be the one saying, "Mmmm, chocolate!" and I'd be analyzing it to figure out what was in it. Sometimes he hates going to dinner with me because I have to give an immediate after-dinner review.

[Tri2Cook]

Just for the record, this is not meant to imply in any way that women have inferior palates. My most reliable tasters are generally female, it was just an observation on one particular item. The topic title was changed to "gender differences in taste" instead of the original "an interesting observation" when it was pointed out to me that my original title wouldn't provide much information about thread content for the search engine to work with. I agreed completely, thus the title change.

I had two more people taste it yesterday. One male, one female. The results this time threw a small twist in the numbers... both just said "mmmm, chocolate". Neither tasted anything else. That gives me six "mmm chocolate" and four "nutty taste" replies. So I'm going to bump up the hazelnut a bit and try again.