The way you structured the test would make it impossible for most as you are asking them to identify each one.
A more accurate test for this subject would be to have a person taste 2 or 3 pieces of meat and ask them if they think the same wood was used on for each, or if one or two of the pieces were smoked with other woods.
One scenario would be to have 3 pieces of chicken. 2 pieces smoked with one wood, 1 piece with some other species. Do the test two or three times. At least one of the times, substitute so that all the pieces were cooked with the same wood.
Short version. If you handed a glass of beer to most people, only a very few would be able to tell you what beer it was. But, if you hand them two glasses of beer and ask them if it's the same beer in both cups, or different beers in each, most would be able to answer correctly.
True.
But many factors come into play.
It would also depend upon how much time passed between each tasted sample.
If the first beer was still on the tongue, palate, and remainder of the oral cavity of the subject, it might be tougher for him to answer correctly.
Also if all the beers being taste tested were of the same type, Pilsner, lager, ale, blondes, ambers, stouts, etc., that could impact the discernment results, vs if the tested samples went across these lines, say using a Pilsner in one cup, an ale in the second cup.
There are literally hundreds of different beers out there. If not thousands. All the way down to home brews. Some no doubt bearing a remarkable similarity in taste to another. In other words, I'd bet that if you looked hard enough, you could find a beer that tasted like for example Budweiser, or close enough to it, that you couldn't tell the difference if blindfolded.
However when it comes to smoking meat, the selection of woods typically used for doing that are limited in the U.S.
Most smoke coming from burned wood used to cook with in this country, smells alike, or at least similar. Until you get to Mesquite and perhaps some of the fruit woods. For example, how often do you go to a cookout, competition, cook off, and take the time to identify the wood that is being burned from one pit to the next using just your nose?
If I were to burn two pieces of wood separately, say hickory and pecan, and let everyone here reading this, smell the smoke from them, not all would even be able to tell that two different woods, one hickory the other pecan, had been burned.
But beer can range widely in taste.
So this point alone makes an analogy between "wood smoke" and being able to discern it, and "beer taste" and being able to discern it, a stretch, but it's fun to try anyway.
BBQ tends to linger or leave an aftertaste. And since smell is a big part of taste, even the act of getting some of it onto your hands could influence your discernment capabilities when you went to eat the next sample.
But just saying that "something is different about this one", vs the other one, doesn't make for a positive identification, which to me is a big part of all of this.
However lets go back to your suggested testing method, using beer or BBQ.
...If you handed a glass of beer to most people, only a very few would be able to tell you what beer it was. But, if you hand them two glasses of beer and ask them if it's the same beer in both cups, or different beers in each, most would be able to answer correctly
Depends. Two lagers which were very similar in taste, "most" might not be able to. However one cup with a lager and the other with a dark, and yes, I'd agree that blindfolded, "most" would be able to answer correctly.
But OK, expand on this. Now give them three cups, and with multiple different possibilities.
1.Cups A, B, C all have the same beer.
Some of the subjects would misidentify even this.
2. Cups A and B have the same beer, while cup C has a different beer.
Depending upon how close in taste beer C is to the beer in cups A and B, many of the subjects would fail here too.
However if the beer in cup C was remarkably different in taste, then it would be easier to identify as "different" from "at least one" of the samples A or B, or both.
That said, some could still be expected to misidentify that A and B were the same beer. Some may even identify A and C as the same, or even B and C as the same, or A, B and C as the same, or A, B and C being all different.
3. Cups A and C have the same beer in them, but cup B a different beer.
Again, depending upon how marked the difference in taste is, you can expect people to misidentify that A and C as well as B were or were not the same beer.
4. Cups A, B and C all have a different beer in them. Again, some would get it right, and identify that there are three different beers. But some would identify two beers as opposed to three. And some might only identify one beer and insist that all three cups had the same beer in them.
5. Cups B and C had the came beer in them, but cup A had a different beer. Again, perhaps not all of the taste testers would even identify this.
So lets extrapolate this to the 7 different woods I mentioned in an earlier post.
Just being able to tell "there's something different about this one", only goes so far.
And to top it off, not everybody will even be able to tell that "there is something different about this one", if the choices of smoke wood were three, and they are say, "Hickory, Pecan and Oak". Many would no doubt misidentify three pieces of meat done by one each of the three, as having been done with the same wood.
Or "Apple" "Peach" and Cherry". Same thing, or some would be able to identify the cherry from the other two.
But until you got to Mesquite, I doubt that the average taste tester, would be able to discern any of the above as even being "different" from the others in the same group of three, Hickory, Oak, Pecan, or the second group of three Apple, Cherry, Peach, and some would not even be able to tell a difference between meat smoked across those two groups of three. Pecan vs peach for example.
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