Nicole Curtis, special to wtop.com

WASHINGTON – Chefs know how to make food taste much better: It’s all about presentation.

A study by the University of Oxford suggests meal presentation has a direct influence on taste.

The researchers asked 30 men and 30 women to taste one of three salads: a tossed salad, a “neat” salad and a salad modeled after a famous painting. The “painting” salad was rated the highest in taste by a margin of 18 percent, according to Reviewed.com.

Professor Charles Spence , an experimental psychologist at Oxford, tells the BBC that when someone sees extra presentation and effort put into a dish, it may convey expectations and impact the experience.

The “painting” salad rated highest regardless of individual tastes. It won in every category: complexity, artistic presentation, liking, willingness to pay and tastiness, according to the study.

“A number of chefs now are realizing that they are being judged by how their foods photograph — be it in the fancy cookbooks [or], more often than not, when diners Instagram their friends,” Spence told the Guardian

Follow @WTOP and @WTOPliving on Twitter.