PrepTest 126, Section 1, Question 2
Soaking dried beans overnight before cooking them reduces(31 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(7 more words not shown)
- APlumper beans enhance(5 more words not shown)
- BThere are no(7 more words not shown)
- CA dish's appearance(6 more words not shown)
- DNone of the(9 more words not shown)
- EThe plumper the(5 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What if plumper beans are unpleasant to eat?
We can accept both cooking facts: soaking saves cooking time, while skipping the soak produces plumper beans. That gives us a choice between two results. It doesn't yet tell us which result makes a better dish.
Imagine making a special dinner where you care much more about serving good food than finishing quickly. You might be willing to spend longer cooking. But if plumper beans have a texture you find disgusting, spending that extra time would make the meal worse. The author is treating plumpness as a benefit without telling us that it improves quality.
What we’re looking for
The question asks for an assumption the argument requires. So we need something this recommendation depends on, not just something that might make it sound nicer. My prediction is the missing connection: plumper beans improve the dish. Otherwise, why choose them when quality matters most?
Working the answers
- ACorrect
This connects the stated advantage of skipping the soak—plumper beans—to the reason for the recommendation—better quality. If plumper beans didn't enhance the dish at all, the argument would lose its reason for recommending them when quality matters more than speed.
- B
We don't need a rule about every kind of dish. Some other dish could improve with faster cooking while this argument about beans still worked. B also doesn't supply the connection we need between the beans' plumpness and the dish's quality.
- C
Why must appearance matter exactly as much as taste? Quality could depend mostly on texture, mostly on taste, or on several features in unequal amounts. The recommendation doesn't require this particular ranking. Even if plumper beans look better, that wouldn't make equal importance necessary.
- D
Other ingredients could need soaking while the beans did not. We could soak those ingredients separately and still follow the recommendation about the beans. The argument doesn't require every ingredient to receive the same treatment.
- E
Taste isn't the same as overall quality. Plumper beans might improve a dish's texture or appearance without tasting better. E also says each increase in plumpness improves taste, which goes beyond treating plumper beans as a benefit in this comparison. A supplies the required connection without adding those extra claims.
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