Comment by zamfi
3 years ago
I love this. Also, in my experience doing the same thing with recipes from pancakes to roast chicken, I think it’s not just about kaizen—it’s also about the “tacit knowledge” that can’t necessarily be communicated through words.
I definitely wasn’t doing it 2% better each time — I was experimenting, trying out new things, seeing how they changed the outcomes, and building an intuition for how stiff the pancake batter was, what color it was, how much the chicken skin glistens, etc. When I tried something new, sometimes it was 2% better, but more often it was 25% better or 40% worse. Either way a success, because I learned what kinds of things were likely to work and what weren’t.
The “reps” help you not just get better, but (as you describe!) they build your mental connections between what you see, smell, and feel, and results. You start to recognize when things look or feel a little different, and adapt.
Honestly it’s a lot like developing expertise in programming!
This is where an experienced cook in the kitchen with you now and then can be so helpful. A book might give some pointers, but they can say "this happened because of that".
If you don't have that, try to not vary more than one thing at a time.