This seems to strawman cooks (in that it leaves out one important epistemic pathwayâcf. Christopher Kimball, Serious Eats; leaving it out makes Aliceâs position weaker and probabilistically undermines the quality of her tomato sauce)
I agree that some cooks can be somewhat âscientificâ/âBob-like, but even the more experimental chefs donât really seem to get too close to Bob on the Alice-Bob spectrum. Iâm not sure though. Serious Eatâs Food Lab can be good. In Search of Perfection (which Iâve been binge watching recently đ) is probably as scientific as it gets in the domain of cooking, but even that probably wouldnât fly in academic journals.
Regardless, although some chefs can be Bob-like, I suspect that most chefs are Alice-like, and I think that in using a phrase like âscience like a chefâ, what matters is what most chefs are like (or, arguably, just what the popular perception of what a chef is like). It sounds like you are more familiar with the domain of cooking than I am, so do you think that most chefs are very Bob-like, to the point where âscience like a chefâ is a strawman? Or just that some minority of chefs are Bob-like, and the phrase misrepresents what they happen to do?
Americaâs Test Kitchen /â Cookâs Illustrated /â etc. is what I had in mind, and Serious Eats, yes, as you say. (I invite you to read through The Dessert Bibleâmy single favorite cookbook of all timeâand then tell me that Kimballâs approach is not scientific!)
but even that probably wouldnât fly in academic journals
You might be surprisedâor, perhaps, dismayedâat what would, and wouldnât, fly in academic journals.
Regardless, although some chefs can be Bob-like, I suspect that most chefs are Alice-like, and I think that in using a phrase like âscience like a chefâ, what matters is what most chefs are like (or, arguably, just what the popular perception of what a chef is like). It sounds like you are more familiar with the domain of cooking than I am, so do you think that most chefs are very Bob-like, to the point where âscience like a chefâ is a strawman? Or just that some minority of chefs are Bob-like, and the phrase misrepresents what they happen to do?
A little of the latter, and a lot of something else entirely: most chefs (or at least, most cooksâor did you mean to imply that Alice and Bob are trained professionals? that would cast the claims of the OP in a different light) are not like either Alice or Bob. Most cooksâeven those who are very experiencedâuse a more intuitive and/âor more standardized approach than even the one you describe Alice as using.
For example, one of the best cooks I know is my grandmother, who has been cooking for over twice as long as Iâve been alive, and who is a trained pharmacist besides; and yet you would struggle in vain to get from her an explanation of how she prepares any given recipe that is even half as coherent as the one Alice gives in your example. Often it will boil down to âbecause thatâs how itâs doneâ. (Which is to say, the evolution of the recipe has taken place across generations, not across iterations over one cookâs career.) I would not recommend that you âscience like my grandmotherâ (although you would obviously be quite foolish to dismiss the knowledge gained by that approachâa fact of which I am reminded every time I have a taste of her cooking).
Of those cooks who do explore recipe-space, I think the Bob approach is much more common and more fruitful than you give it credit forâprecisely because no one with any sense would think that they must recapitulate the entirety of food science, from scratch, all by their lonesome.
I agree that some cooks can be somewhat âscientificâ/âBob-like, but even the more experimental chefs donât really seem to get too close to Bob on the Alice-Bob spectrum. Iâm not sure though. Serious Eatâs Food Lab can be good. In Search of Perfection (which Iâve been binge watching recently đ) is probably as scientific as it gets in the domain of cooking, but even that probably wouldnât fly in academic journals.
Regardless, although some chefs can be Bob-like, I suspect that most chefs are Alice-like, and I think that in using a phrase like âscience like a chefâ, what matters is what most chefs are like (or, arguably, just what the popular perception of what a chef is like). It sounds like you are more familiar with the domain of cooking than I am, so do you think that most chefs are very Bob-like, to the point where âscience like a chefâ is a strawman? Or just that some minority of chefs are Bob-like, and the phrase misrepresents what they happen to do?
Americaâs Test Kitchen /â Cookâs Illustrated /â etc. is what I had in mind, and Serious Eats, yes, as you say. (I invite you to read through The Dessert Bibleâmy single favorite cookbook of all timeâand then tell me that Kimballâs approach is not scientific!)
You might be surprisedâor, perhaps, dismayedâat what would, and wouldnât, fly in academic journals.
A little of the latter, and a lot of something else entirely: most chefs (or at least, most cooksâor did you mean to imply that Alice and Bob are trained professionals? that would cast the claims of the OP in a different light) are not like either Alice or Bob. Most cooksâeven those who are very experiencedâuse a more intuitive and/âor more standardized approach than even the one you describe Alice as using.
For example, one of the best cooks I know is my grandmother, who has been cooking for over twice as long as Iâve been alive, and who is a trained pharmacist besides; and yet you would struggle in vain to get from her an explanation of how she prepares any given recipe that is even half as coherent as the one Alice gives in your example. Often it will boil down to âbecause thatâs how itâs doneâ. (Which is to say, the evolution of the recipe has taken place across generations, not across iterations over one cookâs career.) I would not recommend that you âscience like my grandmotherâ (although you would obviously be quite foolish to dismiss the knowledge gained by that approachâa fact of which I am reminded every time I have a taste of her cooking).
Of those cooks who do explore recipe-space, I think the Bob approach is much more common and more fruitful than you give it credit forâprecisely because no one with any sense would think that they must recapitulate the entirety of food science, from scratch, all by their lonesome.
Upvoted. That all makes sense. Thanks for the input! I really question whether this is a good enough analogy to have published the article now.