There are a few other questions related to this, but they do not explain the
why of the matter.

As I understand it です is present tense while でした is past tense. As such, I
would (wrongly) intuit to say おいしかったでした, i.e., where both おいしい and です are
changed to the past tense.

I tried to ask Japanese friends and they did not really know the answer. The
argued that "if おいしい is in paste tense, です doesn't need to be because おいしい
already is". But by that logic why is it not おいしいでした for example.

Clearly past tense works a little bit differently then I am used to, but I
have not found an explanation of this anywhere. If anybody has a detailed
answer or can link to a clear source, I would be very grateful.
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question
grammar adjectives tense
Why is it おいしかったです and not おいしかったでした?