I haven’t the time to post at length now, but cooking (and baking) is one of my longtime hobbies, so here are some very quick thoughts—any of which I’ll elaborate on later, if anyone asks.
This seems to strawman cooks (in that it leaves out one important epistemic pathway—cf. Christopher Kimball, Serious Eats; leaving it out makes Alice’s position weaker and probabilistically undermines the quality of her tomato sauce)
This applies much more to savory cooking than to dessert cooking/baking, and the difference there is analogous to a certain broader class of difference in epistemic approaches
What would Alice say to Bob if Bob’s tomato sauce didn’t stink but was great? (Or must Bob’s sauce be bad, with that attitude? A very serious claim…)
Implications of differences in flavor perception on points in OP; also, correlation of same with predisposition to certain approaches (does it exist? what does that imply, if it does?)
But good post, overall! We need more of such—upvoted.
What would Alice say to Bob if Bob’s tomato sauce didn’t stink but was great? (Or must Bob’s sauce be bad, with that attitude? A very serious claim…)
I think that Bob’s tomato sauce is likely to stink, because it would take too long to iterate if he does things his way. However, it is certainly possible for his sauce to be great, ie. if he stumbles across a good recipe.
So then, even if Bob happened to have great tomato sauce, Alice would demonstrate to him that he was just lucky, and that his way is going to take way too long, such that in practice he will usually fail. Perhaps she could demonstrate this by having a cook-off with a new dish. Although Bob would have to acknowledge that she’s right, which is the point that I’m making in this article.
I think that Bob’s tomato sauce is likely to stink, because it would take too long to iterate if he does things his way. However, it is certainly possible for his sauce to be great, ie. if he stumbles across a good recipe.
This is critical: you speak of Bob stumbling—but to the contrary, Bob’s approach allows him to make directed, purposeful movements in recipe-space. Bob’s approach starts out more slowly than Alice’s, but then it accelerates in the rate at which it allows Bob to gain knowledge of the possibilities, because Bob is able to gain (a much deeper) understanding of why recipes work the way that they do.
Here we come to my first point: aggregation of knowledge, being the foundation upon which civilization is built, comes into play here too: Bob need not do all his systematic exploration from scratch, as others have done much of it before him; and what of such Bob does, he can document, and then others who come after him benefit.
So then, even if Bob happened to have great tomato sauce, Alice would demonstrate to him that he was just lucky
And Bob would say: No, Alice, you do me an injustice by attributing my success to luck; I made my great tomato sauce the way that I did because I knew exactly what I was doing.
(And the rest of your comment, I addressed above.)
Good points about directed movements and standing on others’ shoulders. After hearing you articulate your thoughts futher, I’m definitely questioning whether cooking was a good example to use.
Would you care to be more explicit about the “important epistemic pathway” that’s being left out and thus strawmanning cooks? [EDITED to add: oops, didn’t see that actually that discussion is elsewhere in the comments. Though I’d say that epistemic pathway isn’t left out so much as it’s perhaps unrealistically rejected.]
This seems to strawman cooks (in that it leaves out one important epistemic pathway—cf. Christopher Kimball, Serious Eats; leaving it out makes Alice’s position weaker and probabilistically undermines the quality of her tomato sauce)
I agree that some cooks can be somewhat “scientific”/Bob-like, but even the more experimental chefs don’t really seem to get too close to Bob on the Alice-Bob spectrum. I’m not sure though. Serious Eat’s Food Lab can be good. In Search of Perfection (which I’ve been binge watching recently 😀) is probably as scientific as it gets in the domain of cooking, but even that probably wouldn’t 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 “science like a chef”, 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 “science like a chef” is a strawman? Or just that some minority of chefs are Bob-like, and the phrase misrepresents what they happen to do?
America’s Test Kitchen / Cook’s Illustrated / etc. is what I had in mind, and Serious Eats, yes, as you say. (I invite you to read through The Dessert Bible—my single favorite cookbook of all time—and then tell me that Kimball’s approach is not scientific!)
but even that probably wouldn’t fly in academic journals
You might be surprised—or, perhaps, dismayed—at what would, and wouldn’t, 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 “science like a chef”, 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 “science like a chef” 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 cooks—or 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 cooks—even those who are very experienced—use a more intuitive and/or 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 I’ve 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 “because that’s how it’s done”. (Which is to say, the evolution of the recipe has taken place across generations, not across iterations over one cook’s career.) I would not recommend that you “science like my grandmother” (although you would obviously be quite foolish to dismiss the knowledge gained by that approach—a 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 for—precisely because no one with any sense would think that they must recapitulate the entirety of food science, from scratch, all by their lonesome.
If Bob’s tomato sauce were great, most likely Alice would be saying ”… And that’s why the only thing you can cook well is tomato sauce, because you’ve spent every minute you’re in the kitchen trying minor variations on your tomato sauce recipe”. Of course, Bob might instead have taken a decent recipe someone else made up and not bothered experimenting with it; in that case the right response might be more like “So how come you never tried that with your own tomato sauce recipe? I think it’s because deep down you know it’s impractical”.
I haven’t the time to post at length now, but cooking (and baking) is one of my longtime hobbies, so here are some very quick thoughts—any of which I’ll elaborate on later, if anyone asks.
This seems to strawman cooks (in that it leaves out one important epistemic pathway—cf. Christopher Kimball, Serious Eats; leaving it out makes Alice’s position weaker and probabilistically undermines the quality of her tomato sauce)
This applies much more to savory cooking than to dessert cooking/baking, and the difference there is analogous to a certain broader class of difference in epistemic approaches
What would Alice say to Bob if Bob’s tomato sauce didn’t stink but was great? (Or must Bob’s sauce be bad, with that attitude? A very serious claim…)
Implications of differences in flavor perception on points in OP; also, correlation of same with predisposition to certain approaches (does it exist? what does that imply, if it does?)
But good post, overall! We need more of such—upvoted.
I think that Bob’s tomato sauce is likely to stink, because it would take too long to iterate if he does things his way. However, it is certainly possible for his sauce to be great, ie. if he stumbles across a good recipe.
So then, even if Bob happened to have great tomato sauce, Alice would demonstrate to him that he was just lucky, and that his way is going to take way too long, such that in practice he will usually fail. Perhaps she could demonstrate this by having a cook-off with a new dish. Although Bob would have to acknowledge that she’s right, which is the point that I’m making in this article.
This is critical: you speak of Bob stumbling—but to the contrary, Bob’s approach allows him to make directed, purposeful movements in recipe-space. Bob’s approach starts out more slowly than Alice’s, but then it accelerates in the rate at which it allows Bob to gain knowledge of the possibilities, because Bob is able to gain (a much deeper) understanding of why recipes work the way that they do.
Here we come to my first point: aggregation of knowledge, being the foundation upon which civilization is built, comes into play here too: Bob need not do all his systematic exploration from scratch, as others have done much of it before him; and what of such Bob does, he can document, and then others who come after him benefit.
And Bob would say: No, Alice, you do me an injustice by attributing my success to luck; I made my great tomato sauce the way that I did because I knew exactly what I was doing.
(And the rest of your comment, I addressed above.)
Good points about directed movements and standing on others’ shoulders. After hearing you articulate your thoughts futher, I’m definitely questioning whether cooking was a good example to use.
cough quality of ingredients cough :)
Would you care to be more explicit about the “important epistemic pathway” that’s being left out and thus strawmanning cooks? [EDITED to add: oops, didn’t see that actually that discussion is elsewhere in the comments. Though I’d say that epistemic pathway isn’t left out so much as it’s perhaps unrealistically rejected.]
I agree that some cooks can be somewhat “scientific”/Bob-like, but even the more experimental chefs don’t really seem to get too close to Bob on the Alice-Bob spectrum. I’m not sure though. Serious Eat’s Food Lab can be good. In Search of Perfection (which I’ve been binge watching recently 😀) is probably as scientific as it gets in the domain of cooking, but even that probably wouldn’t 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 “science like a chef”, 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 “science like a chef” is a strawman? Or just that some minority of chefs are Bob-like, and the phrase misrepresents what they happen to do?
America’s Test Kitchen / Cook’s Illustrated / etc. is what I had in mind, and Serious Eats, yes, as you say. (I invite you to read through The Dessert Bible—my single favorite cookbook of all time—and then tell me that Kimball’s approach is not scientific!)
You might be surprised—or, perhaps, dismayed—at what would, and wouldn’t, fly in academic journals.
A little of the latter, and a lot of something else entirely: most chefs (or at least, most cooks—or 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 cooks—even those who are very experienced—use a more intuitive and/or 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 I’ve 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 “because that’s how it’s done”. (Which is to say, the evolution of the recipe has taken place across generations, not across iterations over one cook’s career.) I would not recommend that you “science like my grandmother” (although you would obviously be quite foolish to dismiss the knowledge gained by that approach—a 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 for—precisely 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.
If Bob’s tomato sauce were great, most likely Alice would be saying ”… And that’s why the only thing you can cook well is tomato sauce, because you’ve spent every minute you’re in the kitchen trying minor variations on your tomato sauce recipe”. Of course, Bob might instead have taken a decent recipe someone else made up and not bothered experimenting with it; in that case the right response might be more like “So how come you never tried that with your own tomato sauce recipe? I think it’s because deep down you know it’s impractical”.
Empirically, this is wrong.