On Food and Cooking

The great virtue of the cook’s time-tested,
thought-less recipes is that they free us from
the distraction of having to guess or
experiment or analyze as we prepare a meal.
On the other hand, the great virtue of thought
and analysis is that they free us from the
necessity of following recipes, and help us
deal with the unexpected, including the
inspiration to try something new. Thoughtful
cooking means paying attention to what our
senses tell us as we prepare it, connecting that
information with past experience and with an
understanding of what’s happening to the
food’s inner substance, and adjusting the
preparation accordingly.
To understand what’s happening within a
food as we cook it, we need to be familiar
with the world of invisibly small molecules
and their reactions with each other. That idea
may seem daunting. There are a hundred-plus
chemical elements, many more combinations
of those elements into molecules, and several