Comment by dbspin
3 years ago
I think you're leaving out the extent to which cooking is an analogue process. Your particular ovens temperature envelope, the rate at which your pan or wok heats (due to its thickness and composition), the specifics of the varieties of plant or cuts of meat you're cooking, the quality or specifics of the spices or oils you're using. I'm no chef, but it seems like these can all make quite substantial changes in cooking times, sauce thickness, flavour profiles etc etc, and all necessitate observation and analogue adjustment of cooking processes.
> I think you're leaving out the extent to which cooking is an analogue process.
The main difference between cooking and process chemistry is that the latter actually cares about quality of the end result.
There is some unavoidable variation because of the inconsistency in ingredients and lack of access to tools that would mitigate it. However, the typical kitchen tools are also just bad by design, with any kind of precision or consistency long ago "value engineered" out of them. And now we also learn that cooking recipes are mostly pulled out of their writers' arses, to the point you might as well ask GPT-4, and save money on a cookbook / avoid exposure to ads and made up life stories on-line.
Hell, GPT-4 can at least also give you a Gantt chart to go with your recipe[0].
In the end, the only way to deal with this is by hand-holding the process, performing minute adjustments as guided by experience. This makes cooking much more of an art than it could - or should - be.
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[0] - Some assembly required. Taste and safety not guaranteed, as I can't cook to save my life. https://cloud.typingmind.com/share/a349a38e-0e24-470e-a1c8-3...
> However, the typical kitchen tools are also just bad by design, with any kind of precision or consistency long ago "value engineered" out of them
Its ripoff engineered. I just threw in the trash an obscenely expensive pan with Vegan, cancer free, teflon free and gluten free coating thats coming off.
> The main difference between cooking and process chemistry is that the latter actually cares about quality of the end result.
Do home cooks not care about how the food tastes? This seems like a strange take. People started cooking by roasting or boiling things over an open flame or searing them on a hot rock. Most of the techniques learned and passed down are about how to ensure good results under contexts where the inputs are naturally inconsistent and hard to control.
I don't know why we'd have an assumption that people have or want to work with precise scientific instruments all the time.
Timer is accurate only if you have first done experiments with your unique settings. However temperature gauges are very useful. I usually trust my eyes and nose more than a timer.