later chapters build on basic scientific principles discussed in earlier chapters. On the other hand, if you like skipping around—say, potato salad doesn’t interest you but roast beef sure does—well, you won’t have much trouble either. I’ve done my best to make each lesson self-contained, cross-referencing earlier chapters when necessary.
One thing I want to make clear here: This book is nowhere near comprehensive . Why would I put myself down like that? Well, it’s because the whole point of science is that it’s a never-ending quest for knowledge. No matter how much we know about the world around us, the world inside a block of cheese, or the world contained in an eggshell, the amount that we don’t know will always be much greater than what we do. The moment we think we know all the answers is the moment we stop learning, and I truly hope that time never comes for me. In the words of Socrates Johnson: “All we know is that we know nothing.”
If there are three rules that I think would make the world a better place if everyone followed them, it’d be these:
challenge everything all the time, taste everything at least once, and relax, it’s only pizza.
are you to say that there’s a better way?
Well, there are a number of answers I could give to this question: It’s my job to study food, test it, and answer questions about it. I have a degree from one of the top engineering schools in the country. I spent a good eight years cooking behind the stoves of some of the best restaurants in the country. I’ve edited recipes and articles in food magazines and on websites for almost a decade. These are all pretty good reasons to put your faith in what I say, but the truth of the matter is this: you shouldn’t trust me.
You see, “Just trust me” was the way of the old cooks.
The MO of the master-apprentice relationship. Do what I say and do it now, because I say so. And that’s exactly the mentality we’re trying to fight here. I want you to be skeptical. Science is built on skepticism. Galileo didn’t come to the conclusion that the Earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around, by blindly accepting what everyone else was telling him. He challenged conventional wisdom, came up with new hypotheses to describe the world around him, tested those hypotheses, and then and only then did he ask people to believe in the madness that he was spouting from behind that awesome beard of his. He did, of course, die under house arrest after being tried by the Roman Inquisition for all of his troubles. (Let’s hope that doesn’t happen to any of you budding kitchen scientists.) And that was for something as trivial as describing the shape of the solar system. Meanwhile, we’re here tackling the big issues.
Pancakes and meat loaf deserve at least as much scrutiny!
The point is this: if at any time while reading this book you come across something I’ve written that just doesn’t
seem right, something that seems as if it hasn’t been sufficiently tested, something that isn’t rigorously explained, then I fully expect you to call me out on it. Test it for yourself. Make your own hypotheses and design your own experiments. Heck, just e-mail me and tell me where you think I went wrong. I’ll appreciate it. Honestly.
The first rule of science is that while we can always get closer to the truth, there is never a final answer. There are new discoveries made and experiments performed every day that can turn conventional wisdom on its head. If five years from now somebody hasn’t discovered that at least one fact in this book is glaringly wrong, it means that people aren’t thinking critically enough.
But some of you might be wondering now, what exactly is science? It’s a really good question, and a topic that’s often misunderstood. Let’s talk about it a bit.
{ The keys to good kitchen science }
S
cience is not about big words. It’s not about lab coats and safety goggles, and it’s definitely not about trying to make yourself sound fancy. Science is not an end in and of itself, but a path. It’s a method to help you discover the underlying order of the world around you and to use those discoveries to help you predict how things will behave in the future. The scientific method is based on making observations, keeping track of those observations, coming up with hypotheses to explain those observations, and then performing tests designed to disprove those hypotheses. If, despite your hardest, most sincere efforts, you can’t manage to disprove the hypotheses, then you can say with a pretty good deal of certainty that your hypotheses are true. That is what science is, and it can be as simple as observing that of the first three beers you had, the coldest one was the tastiest, and therefore it’s probably a good idea to chill down the fourth before you crack it open, or as complex as determining the gene that decides whether your kid’s eyes are going to be blue or brown.Most of us practice science every single day, often without even knowing it. For instance, when I first got
married, I noticed that there seemed to be a direct correlation between some of my wife’s bad moods and my propensity to leave the toilet seat up. (Observation.) I then thought to myself, perhaps if I put the toilet seat down more often, my wife’s mood and therefore my own happiness would improve. (Hypothesis.) I tried putting down the toilet seat a few times and waiting to see how my wife reacted.
(Testing.) Noticing an improvement in her moods, I started putting the seat down almost every time, only occasionally leaving it up to test the continued validity of my hypothesis.
Some folks would call this just being a good roommate/husband. I call it science.
Believe it or not, the kitchen is perhaps the easiest place for a regular person to practice science every day. You’ve certainly performed your own scientific experiments in the past. Here’s an example: You buy a new toaster with a darkness knob that goes from one to eleven (just in case you want it one shade darker than ten) and then notice your toast is coming out too dark on level six, so you turn it down to level four. Now your toast is too light. Working from these two observations, you hypothesize that perhaps five is the right level for your bread. Lo and behold, your next slice of toast and every slice of toast after that come out just right.
Now, that may not be the most groundbreaking observation in the history of science, and it is admittedly very limited in its application (I mean, you can’t even guarantee that the next toaster you own will have the same scale), but it’s science nevertheless, and in that sense, it’s no different from what professional scientists do every day.
Scientists know that bias can be a powerful force in
experiments. Oftentimes scientists only see what they want to see and find the answers they want to find, even if they don’t realize it. Have you ever heard the story of Clever Hans the counting horse? Early in the twentieth century, Hans made quite a name for himself by apparently being intelligent enough to understand German, do arithmetic, recognize the days of the week, differentiate between musical tones, and even read and spell. His trainer would ask him questions and Hans would respond by tapping his hoof. For instance, when asked, “What is eight plus twelve?” he would stamp his hoof twenty times. The horse was a sensation, touring around Germany and amazing crowds with his incredible abilities.
After an intensive study carried out by the German board of education, the observers came to a shocking conclusion:
the whole thing was a scam. Turns out that Hans wasn’t able to do any math at all. What he was quite good at was interpreting the facial expressions and attitudes of his trainer. As he slowly stamped his foot against the ground, he’d observe the tension in the trainer’s face; when he reached the correct number, the trainer would relax, Hans would know that he was finished, and he’d stop tapping. It’s a skill to be admired, for sure. Heck, most of my marital problems would be solved if I could tell when my wife was tense versus relaxed. But could the horse do math? Nope.
Yet here’s the thing: the trainer didn’t even realize what he was doing. He thought he had an amazingly intelligent horse. In fact, the horse was so good at reading faces that even when a complete stranger was asking him the questions, he would answer equally well. How did the
members of the board finally prove that Hans’s so-called abilities were fake? They designed a series of scientific experiments. The simplest involved blindfolding the horse or having the trainer ask his questions out of Hans’s line of sight. As expected, suddenly his amazing intellect disappeared. The most interesting tests of all involved having the trainer ask the horse questions the trainer himself did not know the answers to. Guess what? If the trainer didn’t know the answer, neither did Hans.
THE POINT
here, of course, is that designing a successful experiment—whether it involves a mathematical horse or takes place in your own kitchen—is about eliminating the bias of the experimenter (in this case, you). This isn’t always easy to do, but it’s almost always possible.Let me tell you about an experiment I carried out a little while back to illustrate the seven key steps to a good tasting in the kitchen: eliminate bias, introduce a control, isolate variables, stay organized, address palate fatigue, taste, and analyze.