Comment by dredmorbius

How to Read a French Fry is the book which introduced the idea of a science of cooking to me. I'd caught a 2001 interview on Fresh Air at the time, which is available by the Fresh Air Archive:

<https://freshairarchive.org/segments/russ-parsons>

The book itself is at the Internet Archive:

<https://archive.org/details/howtoreadfrenchf0000pars>

There are far more titles and now websites on the topic, quite probably improving on Russ's effort. But the basics are sound.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic I've taken to baking sourdough bread, which is its own whole set of knowledge and experiments. Every batch is a new discovery, though all have been edible. Worst error to date has been forgetting the salt (much worse than leaving the oven temp too high).