Science

1. What it is you observe.

My wife and I cook almost every night at home. We often alternate when it comes to cooking, so sometimes she’ll cook and sometimes I will. One of our favorite dishes that we make is spaghetti. I’ve noticed how sometimes when we eat, one of us will state “this taste ok tonight” and other times we’ll say “this is the BEST spaghetti i’ve ever had”.

2. What is your question regarding what you observed?

What makes this simple dish taste different overtime we make it? Does it taste better when following a recipe out of a cookbook, following a old family recipe, or just cooking blindsided and going with the flow?

3. Explain your hypothesis.

I believe that for this dish, you do not need to be a “experienced” cook. So making it blindsided without an actual recipe will make it taste better. This way you have the freedom to add any additional meats, sauces, and spices/herbs to the dish. Having the ability to create your own personal flavor, making it taste better.

4. Design a means of testing your hypothesis including the type of data (results) you might collect.

I believe that this would be a very easy experiment. Both my wife and I will prepare the dish. She will use a recipe that she found in one of the cookbooks we own (Option A). Following each and every instruction step by step, also only using the ingredients that we’re listed. I will use the blindside method, and just improvise as I cook (Option B). This means I can add any extra ingredient that i feel nessesary. We will invite three friends over to act as judges. When the two samples are served, they will we blind folded, and will either state that option A or B is better. We will both have only 45 minutes to prepare the dish.

5. Give some possible conclusion(s) to your experiment.

A possible conclusion would that the judges are in the favor of Option A. Using a simple recipe and not over doing the dish makes it taste better. But also, another outcome is that...