Here’s possibly a better example of procedural cooking knowledge: salt.
Indepdent of the perceived “salty” flavor, low levels of salt in food have the subjective effect of bringing out other flavors. Undersalted food will smell good, but taste mysteriously flat and bland. On the other hand, too much makes the dish taste actively salty, which is often not desired.
A cook with some degree of skill and practice will usually have an intuitive grasp of how much salt to put into a dish, depending on the size of the batch and the saltiness of other ingredients. This is a key skill for cooking, but nearly impossible to communicate propositionally, which is why when a novice cook asks me how much salt a dish needs I end up waving my hands around and saying “Uh, however much is enough!”
Here’s possibly a better example of procedural cooking knowledge: salt.
Indepdent of the perceived “salty” flavor, low levels of salt in food have the subjective effect of bringing out other flavors. Undersalted food will smell good, but taste mysteriously flat and bland. On the other hand, too much makes the dish taste actively salty, which is often not desired.
A cook with some degree of skill and practice will usually have an intuitive grasp of how much salt to put into a dish, depending on the size of the batch and the saltiness of other ingredients. This is a key skill for cooking, but nearly impossible to communicate propositionally, which is why when a novice cook asks me how much salt a dish needs I end up waving my hands around and saying “Uh, however much is enough!”