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Comment by em500 | Hacker News Reader

I won't comment on the tomatoes, but as far as eggs are concerned, I'm skeptical that any claims about people being able to taste any diffence would hold up in a proper blind taste test. Conclusion from Serious Eats when they attempted to do that:

  It was pretty clear evidence that as far as eggs go, the mindset of the taster has far more bearing on the flavor of the egg than the egg itself.

https://www.seriouseats.com/what-are-the-best-eggs

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I boil six eggs every Sunday and eat one every morning. Same pan, same cooking element, same timing, ice bath with the same volume of water and cube quantity, everything identical from one week to the next. Have been doing it for at least seven years straight.

I want my yolks to be crystalline in texture, at the transition point between runny and chalky. Not precious about yolk colouring. Must be easy to peel.

There are absolutely differences in egg quality when it comes to boiling them.... Specific brands (some of the expensive/omega/free range etc ones too) reliably come out gelatinous and fiddly to peel. Some come out rubbery. Some just taste wrong and bland, even when I sprinkle with Maldon salt flakes. Not one egg, the entire batch.

Over years of trial and error, I found a brand where I can guarantee a consistent textural outcome from my process, and every morning I exclaim "THAT is a good boiled egg" after finishing it.

I've always thought a lot had to do with the age of the eggs. Very fresh eggs are usually harder to peel. I usually let eggs sit at least a week or two after purchase before I use them (this is in the USA where eggs are sold refrigerated).

It's the opposite for poaching, fresh hold together much better

I find that the cheapest kind of eggs poach much better because they have a much higher turnover in the supermarket so they are much fresher. The fancy omega eggs and other specialty ones are quite old in comparison.

Reminds me of the time I tricked my housemate years ago by drinking his fancy single malt scotch then replacing the contents with some really cheap Spanish whisky. He came home took a sip and said "aaah, you can't beat the taste of a fine Scottish single malt". The bottle and label were enough to convince him it tasted good.

(NB I'm not claiming there is no difference in flavour and quality - there absolutely is - but it's interesting how easily suggestible people are by the external appearance)

I am shocked how good is a 10 USD bottle of whisky or Japanese shochu or wine these days. I think the science of making booze has improved so much in the last couple of decades.

This.

In my student days, thirty years ago, you would have to be careful buying wine from a supermarket as it could be borderline undrinkable.

Nowadays? Not so much. Even the cheapest swill is drinkable. Not really nice or flavorful, but certainly not disgusting.

Blind folded is not a proper taste test though.

One uses all the senses when eating. For eggs the quality of the yolk is obvious by looking.

I guess the idea is that you're "blind" to the brand, origin etc of the egg. You don't know anything about it other than what's directly in front of you.

Although now you bring it up,it would be interesting to see whether actually blindfolded taste tests would confirm or deny your idea that the visible quality of the yolk correlates with it's (non-visible) taste.

The meaning "blind" being used here is: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinded_experiment

It has nothing to to with depriving a participant of their sense of sight (except incidentally.)

I believe there might be certain feeds that could affect taste, hearing story of how chickens fed with fish had fish taste... But if the main feed is mostly same, the taste should be mostly same. And I doubt any producer has anything that would add any offtastes.

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