taster
/ˈteɪstə
/noun
1A person employed to test food or drink for quality by tasting it: a tea taster...
- He started at Taylors as a trainee taster and quality sales assistant, dealing in tea and coffee.
- My best advice, Olga, is to be guided by the Evening Press's ‘professional’ food tasters; you can't go far wrong with them.
- An anecdote about food tasters begins: ‘One bright summer day, I had lunch with two women who run a company in New Jersey called Sensory Spectrum.’
1.1A small cup used by a person tasting wine.In fact, it was a rare Charles II (1660-1680) silver wine taster.
1.2An instrument for extracting a small sample from within a cheese.This magician will tirelessly sample the cheese in the making, estimate the flexibility of the paste, evaluate the intensity of the Penicillium roqueforti with a cheese taster.
2British A small quantity or brief experience of something, intended as a sample: the song is a taster for the band’s new LP...
- I hadn't had time to ponder on what my taster of a Bird Experience Day at Leighton Hall's falconry would involve.
- She runs the regular Making Choices course offering people a taster of what a career in child care might offer.
- The Golden Triangle packs some of the country's most enduring icons and rich experiences into a small space and time, making it an ideal taster of what India has to offer.
Origin
Late Middle English: in early use from Anglo-Norman French tastour, from Old French taster 'to taste'; later from taste + -er1.