It’s easy to experiment if you know what to change. Having a variety of recipes will suggest things to change—like time/temperature combinations.
And sometimes relevant parameters are nonobvious to a non-expert. Consider whipped cream, a task superficially similar to making meringues; oils clearly don’t matter, since the substance you are whipping is itself roughly 40% fat. On the other hand, local ambient temperature matters a lot—the cream won’t stiffen as well if it is warm, so using a chilled bowl can improve results.
Continuing the cooking theme, other subtle factors can be the acidity of various ingredients (important for chemical leavening), the ambient humidity, and even the local ambient microbial life—the flavor of sourdough breads, lambic beers, and certain cheeses are dramatically influenced by local microbes, to the extent that certain strains of yeast and bacteria share the names of the region that is known for their flavors, cf. Penicillium roqueforti, Brettanomyces bruxellensis, and Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis.
And sometimes relevant parameters are nonobvious to a non-expert. Consider whipped cream, a task superficially similar to making meringues; oils clearly don’t matter, since the substance you are whipping is itself roughly 40% fat. On the other hand, local ambient temperature matters a lot—the cream won’t stiffen as well if it is warm, so using a chilled bowl can improve results.
Continuing the cooking theme, other subtle factors can be the acidity of various ingredients (important for chemical leavening), the ambient humidity, and even the local ambient microbial life—the flavor of sourdough breads, lambic beers, and certain cheeses are dramatically influenced by local microbes, to the extent that certain strains of yeast and bacteria share the names of the region that is known for their flavors, cf. Penicillium roqueforti, Brettanomyces bruxellensis, and Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis.