Yeah his recipe was very odd. That sort of cooking is very fiddly. I rubbished a whole batch of cookies a few weeks ago just by cooking them ~2 mins too long. Sweats seem to be very exacting one what you need to do to make them come out correctly. Other kinds of cooking you can +/- a lot of things and still get something good. Sweats on the other hand. You better get it 'just right'.
Can confirm. Baking by mass, cooking by eyeballing amounts into the pan and constant tasting.
About the only time my cooking is science is candy. Every degree matters, percentage matters so much, etc. A few degrees means crystals are radically different.
Imo both cooking and baking are "science" until you have the requisite experience to mess around, then they both become art. You can absolutely guess your way into a great cake recipe based on feel.
I think the two important differences are that the results of bad cooking tend to be slightly more edible than the results of bad baking, so many people don't even realize they can't cook. And many more people are forced into cooking via necessity, so the average skill level is higher.
Having a temperature preference for steak is just that, preference. Saltiness is a preference. As is most things in cooking.
Raw dough is always raw dough. You can't fake rising, etc.
Not to mention, if you watch cooking/baking shows, you'll see just how much overlap there really is. Some challenges in Masterchef involves baked goods, cakes, macaroons, etc. Some challenges in the Great British Baking Show involves cooking things. Either to make savory pies or to make compotes or jams, etc.
It's certainly true that there is plenty of science in cooking and plenty of art in baking. My comment is very reductive.
That said, cooking is generally far more forgiving that baking. If you put some amount of chicken in an oven set to a temperature of "very hot", you'll eventually have cooked chicken.
If you mix some amount of flour, water, and yeast, let it sit for some amount of time, and then put it in a "very hot" oven, you're unlikely to end up with what anyone would call "bread". It may not even really be that edible unless you were to grind it back into a power and mix it with water.
I'll back you up here. While i don't do a lot of baking, I've done enough over my life to get a feel for what the ingredients do. I adjust enough that I think most folks would describe it as "not following the recipe".
I will often reduce sugar, add things (cocoa, nuts and so on). As an example if you add cocoa you need to add fluid to compensate. More butter (or oil) leads to a "wetter" crumb and so on.
It takes more experience than regular cooking to do this though, and th feedback cycle is slower.
