Ever since I lost my copy of Mrs Beaton's Cookbook in the back of a squad car speeding along Muswell Hill Road I've been searching for an authority on how best to stuff the Christmas turkey. My discerning guests demand satisfaction. And what with the advent of a new millennium, the problem had a greater pungency this season. Thus began my scientiยฎc search for the superior stufยฎng.
My ยฎrst thought was to seek guidance in the eating disorder literature, so I turned to the haute cuisine of comparative treatment research, the randomized controlled trial (RCT). We've read a lot about these recipes lately. One of the most recent ones concerned adding low-dose imipramine to dietary counselling with psychological support in the treatment of obesity (Laederach-Hofmann et al., 1999). Last year Wilson (1998) presented a spicy defence of the RCT's culinary merits. He maintains that RCTs have established cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) as the `ยฎrst-line treatment of choice' for bulimia nervosa. Although acknowledging a need to improve upon the outcome of CBT (about 50 per cent of patients are symptomatic at the end of treatment and 5 years later) he sees this happening through various culinary reยฎnements of the present recipe (Wilson, 1999).
So if the RCT could solve the problem of treating bulimia nervosa surely it could be applied to my kitchen conundrum. Feeling inspired, my mind leapt at the promising implications, and I started planning my own dining room RCT. I could ยฎrst blindfold my guests and then present them with a random schedule of carefully controlled and consistent stufยฎng mixtures of various ยฏavours. Of course, I'd need standard outcome measures of taste, texture, aroma, palatability, seasonal savouriness, etc., but that would be a triยฏe.
Unfortunately, my wife put a perfunctory halt to these plans. She was quick to point out that her mother was not going to allow herself to be blindfolded and experimentally fed at my dinner table. She predicted a problem of compliance, and I was forced to agree. Nevertheless, given the results of last year's random errors in the kitchen the blindfold was not something to snub.