As a partner in our WNC Lettuce Landrace Breeding Project, Sow True Seed hosted an Earth Day lettuce taste testing and invited members of the community to come and taste and report on the 18 different varieties in our starter population.
Our feedback forms were kept pretty simple. Lettuce tasters were invited to rate each variety from 1 to 5 on taste and texture. There was also a column for ‘keywords’ with the hope that people could list any words that popped into their heads as they munched on any given variety!
Taste tests are always somewhat subjective, but the hope is than with enough feedback we can pick out general trends. Scanning through the twenty odd fully filled out forms, it was interesting to note that one variety was described as bitter on one form and sweet on another. I also noticed that the texture experience varied massively from eating a leaf piece to a stem piece.
Below you can find the table of the average response (a simple total of ranked responses divided number of responses). The keywords are listed as written and a number in parenthesis indicates a repeat keyword.
