Meh, I try not to think too hard about this.

In the end you're tasting flavour, which was about equal. You can't actually tell how hard someone tried to come up with something, or how many times they failed before finding the right combination. Hayama did it within minutes while Souma took days, but without the story you can't "taste" it from the food. The only give-away would be the rarity or exoticness of the actual ingredient.

Interestingly some of the other crew "lost". Now Souma would have to do a Shokugeki of sorts to rescue them. Having the Alice and Slavic guy lose comes as a bit of a surprise. They must have been up against the Elite 10 as well. Having the Elites as a benchmark for an exam is ridiculous in its own right.