Blueberry Muffin Taste Test

After a 6 year break, the Waldin Test Kitchen relaunched with new staff and a Blueberry Muffin Taste Testing. The new researchers are Timothy Waldin and Oliver Waldin. Both have years of experience (7 and 4 years respectively) tasting sweet, treats, and muffins of all variety, with chocolate being their area of expertise.

The experiment had one simple question: Which blueberry muffin tastes best?  Testers tasted four recipes:
1. Mix - Betty Crocker Wild Blueberry box mix
2. Low Fat - a healthy, whole wheat, low-fat recipe
3. Perfect - a no compromise full fat, full sugar muffin
4. Vegan - sure was, no dairy or animal product at all

Mix, Low-Fat, Perfect, Vegan (from left to right)

The independent variables were diligently prepared by Oliver with a bit of help from Thao (aka Mom).

  

The test design and interviews were conducted by Timothy. Each muffin received a code name from The Lego Movie (Emmet, Vitruvius, Batman, and Wyldstyle). Testers were presented with all four muffins at once and allowed to taste the muffins in which ever random order they wanted. Afterwards, they ordered their muffin preferences from 1st to 4th, and asked to identify the muffin recipes.

Drumroll please...The winner was:
#1 Emmet (the Perfect, no compromise muffin)
- avg rank of 1.6, with 7 testers placing it 1st and 5 testers placing it 2nd

#2 Batman (Betty Crocker Mix)
- avg rank: 2.3, with 3 testers placing it 1st and 6 testers placing it 2nd

#3 Wyldstyle (Speckled Palate Vegan)
- avg rank: 2.8, with surprisingly 2 testers placing it 1st

#4 Vitruvius (Skinny Taste Low Fat)
- avg rank:3.2, with all but 2 tasters placing it 3rd or 4th

Tabulating the data

Presenting the results

A secondary objective was to determine if tasters could identify the recipes. The results were surprising. Testers were only correct 29% of the time. The most common mistake was 75% of the testers thought the Vegan muffin was the Low Fat muffin. The most often correctly identified were the Perfect and Mix muffins, both at 45%.

And the most important finding is "Everything is awesome. Everything is cool when you're part of  a team" (set to the tune of The Lego Movie"). We are very fortunate to have you all as regulars in the Waldin Test Kitchen. Thanks to all the testers for participating: Dave, Diana, Euree, Heather, Luice, Michele, Oliver, Ray, Ryan, Shipra, Thao, Timothy, and Vanita.

The Waldin Kitchen is taking nominations for the next test.