The professional taster

There are some mysteries in food production that can only be solved through tasting. And there are people who have better taste than anyone else. Copeland is one of those people, something of an independent professional taster. She is in high demand among large food companies in Canada and the US because she can determine what is wrong in their plant, supply chain or formula just by tasting the product.

After working for about 16 years at Canadian grocery giant Loblaw Companies, where she developed products for the chain's President's Choice brand, Copeland began working independently as a consultant. Now companies turn to her when they need help bringing a new product to market or need to figure out why an existing product doesn't taste the way it should.

One August morning, she took me to Chudley's Bakery in Milton, Ontario, northwest of Toronto, where she sampled cherries, among other things. The product development team in the test kitchen was particularly suspicious of one cherry sample because there was a texture they couldn't quite identify, something slightly grainy on the skin. The developers were worried that the supplier was adding a secret coating, perhaps some combination of sugar and citric acid, presumably to mask the crop's deficiencies.

Outside Toronto, Chudleigh's is best known for its interactive farm where families go to pick their own apples. But quietly, Chudleigh's has become a serious player in the North American grocery market. Five minutes from the farm, the company operates a 110,000 square meter farm. ft. manufacturing facility that produces pies, cakes and baked goods for leading supermarket chains in the United States and Canada.

This summer, the bakery had to find a new source of cherries as its existing supplier experienced growing problems. The product development team collected samples and tried to choose a winner. They challenged Copeland to try three different dishes. One sample was labeled W because the cherries were in a white box, the other was labeled B because they were in a brown box.

Copeland pointed out small dots on one of the cherries that the developers thought could be sugar. But Copeland was skeptical. It simply did not make sense for a supplier to incur additional cost and risk by adding something to their product without stating it on the label.

“I think it might be freeze-thaw,” she said.

When fruit freezes, then thaws, and then freezes again, its texture deteriorates. So she thought the seller might have left the cherry samples in the car too long.

This was a surprising discovery because to me they all tasted like cherry. Copeland, however, was able to sample enough to come up with theories about the cherry's backstory. Either she had supernatural powers or she set me up. But after spending several months following her, I learned the real reason why she can try things that other people can't.

Copeland has an ongoing agreement with Chudleigh's where she visits the test kitchen twice a month to help young product developers with new projects.

One developer gave Copeland a fried stuffed pastry. Copeland tasted it and then spat it into a paper cup. The spit cup is a common tool in test kitchens. Most people in the bakery used one, all more or less the same, never looking at the cup, always focusing on the product on the table, as if deep in thought, as if the spitting hadn't actually happened. And when they weren't using it, they must have kept it in a special way that covered the top, because I never saw any rejected food inside, not once.

That morning I tried everything Copeland tried and couldn't bring myself to spit. I just gulped. But by the end I realized the importance of the cup.

“What was the temperature?” Copeland said, asking about the oil used to fry the baked goods.

It was 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

“It should be higher,” Copeland said. This will allow less oil to be absorbed into the dough.

“I would check your oil,” she continued. “Is it fresh? It doesn't taste fresh.”

Over the course of the morning, Copeland tried about 10 foods, plus cherries. One pie required 20–25 percent less fruit. Another dish required about 0.5 percent more salt. There was a hint of green onion in the savory baked goods, which came out too strong.

When I heard this, I panicked. I couldn't taste the onion. I closed my eyes tightly and searched for it, almost begging for the onion to appear on my tongue, but nothing. I was worried my mouth was broken. Each time I listened to Copeland identify the flaws and prescribe remedies for something, then taste it and think, “Oh my God, this is really good.”

“That’s the difficulty,” she said later.

As a production manager recently told me, it's easy to make something delicious in a test kitchen. The hardest part is producing the same dish on a commercial scale. According to the executive, this is the difference between painting the Mona Lisa and reproducing 100,000 prints of the Mona Lisa. Something is bound to go wrong. The nuances are lost. Textures change. And although most people have experienced the new version and know that it is worse, almost no one can explain exactly why. This is where Copeland comes in.

One day we went to visit Mildred's Temple Kitchen, a popular brunch spot in Toronto that now sells its own brand of pancake mixes and syrup. Copeland helped them develop a line of spreads, including apple butter, based on the restaurant's recipes.

Sitting at a table in the back of the restaurant, she tried a spoonful of apple butter.

“It’s very spicy,” Copeland told chef and owner Donna Ducher.

After some discussion, Dooher turned to me.

“Let’s ask Jake,” she said.

I froze. I didn't get any ginger. It was as if they said the fire alarm went off, but I didn’t hear anything.

“I think it’s very tasty,” I said.

After this, Copeland advised me to go home and get a jar of ground ginger.

“Smell it, carefully,” she said. “The best way to smell that dry stuff smell is to keep it away and just bring it closer.”

Then I had to put some ground ginger on my hand and taste it, then drink some water, take a break and go back to the apple butter.

At home, I followed the instructions exactly, but when I tried apple butter, I had the same panic. There was no ginger there.

Then suddenly there was a flash of ginger on the tip of my tongue.

Up until this point, I thought Copeland had some inexplicable God-given talent. One day at the kitchen table, I watched her conduct a blind triangle taste test in which she was able to detect the difference between two batches of lime-flavored soda produced by the same facility, just at different times. It seemed like a magic trick.

After experimenting with ginger, I realized what was really going on. I just loaded one flavor profile into my head. Copeland built an entire library.

I asked her if this high-tech method of tasting and separating food ever begins to take away her enjoyment of food.

“When I eat out, I don’t really dig,” she said. “Sometimes I meet someone and they say, ‘I feel something. Do you think it’s turmeric?” And I was like, “I’m just enjoying food.”

It didn't take me long to realize how ridiculous my question was. Of course she was having fun. It was a warm day and we were sitting on the patio of one of her favorite coffee shops. She did make it a point to go inside, just to look at the box of baked goods. Another day, she made a special trip to a chocolate shop in the West End, where they sold a very rare variety of vanilla.

Her kitchen is a calm place where nothing looks like it's been stuffed into a drawer. Her baking dishes are neatly stacked on the shelf. She has a cutting board dedicated exclusively to fruits and sweets, so she never smells a hint of garlic in her watermelon. Her mail carrier works on a first-name basis with her dog, Lucy, because so many companies send samples to her home for Copeland to try. She travels to New York, Paris and Mexico City for research. I was talking to her clients, and one of them decided to make her laugh, as it reflected throughout her face.

If this woman doesn't find joy in food, who does?

There was a moment in the test kitchen at Chudleigh's in August when a young product developer stepped forward to present an egg custard dish she had been working on. Copeland had seen this several times before. The first time it was gray. But since then the developer has gone through more than 25 iterations.

It was now buttery yellow and didn't run when she cut it, just a perfect, jiggly piece. Copeland was so happy for the developer that she gasped.