For the 1837 edition, Joseph Smith deleted the perfect auxiliary had in order to remove a very awkward construction. The original problem seems to have been the use of two separated adverbial elements (ever and before) with the verb phrase “had tasted”.
Elsewhere in the text there are examples like this one. First of all, the adverb ever can appear before the perfect auxiliary have:
There are also examples with the adverb before between the have auxiliary and the past participle of the main verb:
But even of more significance are two examples from 1 Nephi 11:1 that not only have before between had and the past participle, but also have never, the negative form of ever, right before the had:
In fact, in the first of these two cases in 1 Nephi 11:1, scribe 3 of 𝓞 initially wrote “which I never before” but then crossed out the before and wrote inline “had before seen”. This error thus shows the natural tendency to put the two adverbs never and before together; it also shows that the awkward word order “never had before seen” is definitely intended.
All of this evidence argues that the original “I ever had before tasted” in 1 Nephi 8:11 is clearly intended and should be restored, despite its awkwardness in modern English.
Summary: Restore the original reading in 1 Nephi 8:11, with its two adverbs separated by the perfect auxiliary had (“ever had before tasted”); although awkward, such syntax occurs fairly often in the text.