Cooking is a science, plain and simple, end of question, anybody that would tell you different does not know what they are talking about.
The recipes are mathimaticle and biological formulas, science makes it all work, if you do not understand science then you do not understand food, or cooking.
People that think that making a steak medium or well done is a totally natural phenomenon are idiots, the temperature has to be just right for you to get you medium steak or your fish cooked though, the science of it has to be perfect to get the desired result.
Science tells us that slow cooking is our friend in order to get the meat nice and tender, shocking the meat with extreme temperature will only scare the meat to be dry and hard, something that science also says.
Recipes are important to follow, or at the very least, do not stray to far from the original, they tell you the right amount of acids and fat to have in them, so that your cake or sauce will be beautiful like a sunny july day, and not hideous like a rainy dark cold November “day”.
Something that not many people have talked about or noticed is that, as our understanding of science expands so does our understanding of food and cooking, of course nobody remembers what food was like 200 years ago, but do you really think it was good compared to today?
What I think is interesting is the question “what will food be like in 300years?”
When we are more advanced and more sophisticated then now, it could go two ways, the way of science or the way of economy(meaning that food will be more commercialized then it is now).
For now I will remain positive and believe that what we now of food now is only the beginning, and that there are much more interesting discoveries on the horizon.
jtandfood 