Chocolate chip cookie – homemade or store bought. Lani

“ ‘C’ is for cookie and cookie is for me!” - Cookie Monster

ABSTRACT A survey of three different chocolate chip cookies was given to 7 future bilingual Anglophones and 3 francophones on July 26, 2016 at 7:30pm at the Ottawa Public Library, St. Laurent Branch located at 515 Cote. The intent of the survey was to see if the 10 persons could determine the homemade .

INTRODUCTION The chocolate chip cookie is one of the most common types and most well-known cookie. The chocolate chip cookie was invented by Ruth Graves Wakefield. She owned the Toll House Inn in Whitman, during the 1930’s. For me personally it’s my favorite cookie because it’s simple yet no two are the same. When I was younger, I enjoyed any chocolate chip cookie, store bought or homemade. Now that I am older, my favorite are home made. Whenever I see a bake sale, I look for homemade chocolate chip cookies. In a store, I look for the chocolate chip cookies and try new ones out. There are many variations on the chocolate chip cookies including the addition of nuts, peanut butter, other types of “chips” such as butterscotch, and more. The basic ingredients are the same, flour, sugars, baking powder, vanilla, eggs, and butter. Variations are not just on the types of chips added but also the addition of milk, chocolate cocoa, types of sugars, possibly oatmeal and more. The basic theme is the same, chocolate with some cookie dough. I’m older now and rather than getting joy out of eating as many as I can before getting sick, I enjoy making them, sharing them and watching others enjoy eating too many of them. I think now when I make them it reminds me of when I was younger and making them with my mother. I see my sister helping in my memories but I think she helped more with the eating once they were out of the oven. My father also helped with that part but he knew how to share. My sister was probably a little slow and never really knew how to share. I think she said they were too hot for me to eat but I looking back, I am doubtful that was the real reason. But that is another story.

In this report we look at the results of the survey of three different chocolate chip cookies. The goal of the survey was to determine which of the three cookies was homemade. However, many other interesting results occurred one of which was that some people do not like sweet things. Shocking, but true. These results will be presented and discussed in later sections of this report.

METHOD Survey A short survey was created to determine which cookie people thought was homemade. The survey consisted of 5 questions the 5th being whether the cookie was homemade or not, a simple yes or no response. The other 4 questions were about the characteristics of the cookie: crunchy, moist, chewy, yummy and each characteristic had 4 options: no, a little, yes and very much! All 5 variables are categorical variable, the first 4 consisting of 4 categories and the 5th only two, so a binary variable. Three cookies were presented to each person along with the survey. The cookies were numbered 1, 2 and 3. An incentive to do the survey was given in the form of three chocolate chip cookies. The survey itself may be found in appendix A.

Data processing The data itself had to be counted and tabulated and then entered into an excel spreadsheet manually. An appropriate table structure and then representation of the variables/characteristics and responses had to be determined and then entered into the excel spreadsheet. Initially, a value of 1, 2, 3 or 4 representing, no, a little, yes and very much, respectively, was given to represent each response to each of the four questions: is the cookie, crunchy, moist, chewy or yummy? And initially a value of 1 or 2 representing yes or no, respectively, to the question as to whether the cookie eater thought the cookie was homemade or not. After inspection, it was decided to return to the original string values of “non”, “un peu”, “oui”, “tres croquant” etc. for the cookie characteristics and to “non” and “oui” for the question whether or not the cookie was homemade. The few non-responses were replaced with “pas de reponse”. A table of the data collected can be found in appendix B.

Descriptive Statistics A total of 10 people participated in the survey; each person had 3 cookies to eat and survey for a total of 30 surveys. The total number of or nonresponses was 4. There were 3 non responses for “caoutchouteuse” and 1 nonresponse for “humide”. Tables 3-6 give the results of the proportions for each cookie of people who thought the cookies were chewy, crunchy, moist and yummy. Table 7 gives the proportions for each cookie of people who thought the given cookie was homemade. Figures 2-5 give the frequency histograms for how chewy, crunchy, moist and yummy each cookie is. Figure 6 gives the frequency histogram for how many thought each cookie was homemade.

RESULTS Eating the cookie was the incentive to do the survey and the response rate was quite good. There were only 4 non responses out of the 150 responses. This may have been due to too much eating and thus being distracted; too much talking about the cookies and the correct French word for chewy and moist and thus being distracted; or a number of other reasons that were not fully understood because it was in French. Everyone, 10/10 of the participants, thought cookie #2 was home made; 3/5 of the participants thought cookie #3 was homemade; 2/5 participants thought cookie #1 was home made. This is given in table 7 and can be seen in figure 6.

CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSIONS Sources of error Non response to some questions; there was no cleansing of the pallet between cookies; everyone has a different taste, i.e. some like sweet things, some do not, some will eat anything in front of them; some were not able to make a decision as to which cookie was homemade; biases that some had towards chocolate chip cookies i.e. traditionalists, those that prefer only the original chocolate chip cookie with no surprises in it; survey was in French written by someone learning French; lack of training for the person administering the survey.

Observations During the round table discussion everyone’s impressions of the cookies were given. Many people remarked on the appearance of the second cookies. Many were confused as to which cookie was homemade.

It was nice to have everyone participating including the instructors but also having everyone be able to say something about the same topic. Discussions arose around the words caoutchouteuse, croquant vs croustillant, humide the word provided by google translate for moist vs moelleux provided by the library’s big fat French dictionary for the word moist. More cookie related vocabulary can be found in appendix F.

Cookie identities Cookie 1 was purchased from the Metro grocery store. It was made by the Front Street Bakery company, des biscuits miniatures gastronomes. Cookie 2 was indeed the home made cookie. The surprise inside the cookies were M&M’s. The recipe for this cookie was modified slightly from the recipe given in the appendix C. Cookie 3 is from frozen Pillsbury cookie dough, biscuits aux morceaux chocolates.

FUTURE WORK Some people asked where was the milk. Future cookie surveys could include milk which could also be used to cleanse the pallet between cookies. Some people suggested other characteristics of cookies that could have been added to the survey such as sweetness, the appearance of the cookie and many others. Future surveys could include more characteristics. Future surveys could also include demographic information including gender, age range so as to get some idea of what younger, older, males or female participants think about chocolate chip cookies. Some people mentioned they preferred salty or savoury foods to sweets, while others said they would eat anything that was in front of them. Perhaps a future survey could be for a savour food. What food though?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Groupe de français, les mardi soir, 18h30 – 20h au 515 Cote.

REFERENCES 1. Steege, Gwen, The Search for the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie, Wing Bookd, New York 1988.

APPENDICIES Appendix A : Cookie Survey

croquant Non. Un peu. Oui. Très croquant!

humide Non. Un peu. Oui. Très humide! Très caoutchouteuse Non. Un peu. Oui. caoutchouteuse! délicieux Non. Un peu. Oui. Très délicieux!

Fait a la main Non. Oui.

Biscuit 1 Mais un cercle pour choisir la bonne réponse.

croquant Non. Un peu. Oui. Très croquant!

humide Non. Un peu. Oui. Très humide!

Très caoutchouteuse Non. Un peu. Oui. caoutchouteuse!

délicieux Non. Un peu. Oui. Très délicieux!

Fait a la main Non. Oui.

Biscuit 2 Mais un cercle pour choisir la bonne réponse.

croquant Non. Un peu. Oui. Très croquant!

humide Non. Un peu. Oui. Très humide!

Très caoutchouteuse Non. Un peu. Oui. caoutchouteuse!

délicieux Non. Un peu. Oui. Très délicieux!

Fait a la main Non. Oui.

Biscuit 3 Mais un cercle pour choisir la bonne réponse

Appendix B: Survey results id Biscuit croquant humide caoutchouteuse delicieux a la main 1 1 un peu un peu un peu tres delicieux! non 2 1 un peu un peu non oui non 3 1 oui non non oui non 4 1 oui oui oui oui non 5 1 oui oui pas de reponse! oui oui 6 1 non oui un peu tres delicieux! oui 7 1 non un peu oui oui non 8 1 un peu un peu oui oui oui 9 1 un peu un peu non tres delicieux! non 10 1 un peu un peu oui tres delicieux! oui 11 2 oui non non tres delicieux! oui 12 2 tres croquant! oui oui tres delicieux! oui 13 2 oui non un peu oui oui 14 2 tres croquant! tres humide! tres caoutchouteuse! tres delicieux! oui 15 2 oui pas de reponse! pas de reponse! oui oui 16 2 non un peu un peu oui oui 17 2 oui un peu un peu un peu oui 18 2 tres croquant! un peu non oui oui 19 2 oui un peu un peu oui oui 20 2 oui oui un peu tres delicieux! oui 21 3 non oui tres caoutchouteuse! tres delicieux! oui 22 3 un peu oui oui oui oui 23 3 oui non un peu oui oui 24 3 un peu oui un peu un peu oui 25 3 oui oui pas de reponse! oui non 26 3 non tres humide! non tres delicieux! oui 27 3 non oui un peu tres delicieux! non 28 3 non un peu oui oui non 29 3 non oui non un peu non 30 3 tres croquant! un peu oui tres delicieux! oui

Table 2 Cookie survey results.

Table 1 Results of cookie survey Appendix C: Cookie recipe

Figure 1 Cookie recipe modified for cookie #2. [1]

Appendix D: Tables biscuit non oui pas de reponse! tres caoutchouteuse! un peu 1 0.3 0.4 0.1 0 0.2 2 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.5 3 0.2 0.3 0.1 0.1 0.3 Table 3 Chewy proportions for each cookie. Biscuit non oui tres croquant! un peu 1 0.2 0.3 0 0.5 2 0.1 0.6 0.3 0 3 0.5 0.2 0.1 0.2 Table 4 Crunchy proportions for each cookie. biscuit non oui pas de reponse! tres humide! un peu 1 0.1 0.3 0 0 0.6 2 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.4 3 0.1 0.6 0 0.1 0.2 Table 5 Moist proportions for each cookie. biscuit oui tres delicieux! un peu 1 0.6 0.4 0 2 0.5 0.4 0.1 3 0.4 0.4 0.2 Table 6 Yummy proportions for each cookie. biscuit non oui 1 0.6 0.4 2 0 1 3 0.4 0.6 Table 7 Homemade proportion results for each cookie.

Appendix E: Figures

Figure 2 Frequency histogram for the chewiness of each cookie.

Figure 3 Frequency histogram for how crunchy each cookie was.

Figure 4 frequency histogram for how moist each cookie was.

Figure 5 Frequency histogram for how yummy each cookie was.

Figure 6 Frequency histogram for which cookie was handmade.

Appendix F: Vocabulary Un biscuit (cookie) Un sondage (survey) Un goût (taste) Goûter (to taste) Partager (to share) Croquant (crunchy) Moelleux (soft) Fait à la main (home made) Délicieux (delicious) Un tourbillon (swirl) Sucré (sweet) Un sucre (sugar) Mémorable (memorable, joyful) Juste (fair)