My read of “The Food Lab,” which I think is not uncommon, is that it’s a book built around the idea of optimization. There’s certainly, as you said, unpacking the science, and explaining why this or that recipe works. But it also implies that a recipe can have a platonic ideal, or a perfect state.

Certainly, I understand why you would read it that way, and why a lot of people would read it that way, but that’s definitely not where I am right now. My views on a lot of these things have changed in the last six or seven years. Even when I was writing “The Food Lab,” when I said something like “the best,” what I really meant was: “I’m going to give you some basic descriptions that I think a lot of people would agree are what ‘the best mac and cheese’ is. There are certain things that maybe not everybody agrees on, but here are my specific goals right now, which I think probably a lot of people agree are good goals to have for macaroni and cheese. And now I’m going to show you ways you can optimize those specific things. If you disagree that those are good things in mac and cheese, well, I want to provide you with enough background information so that you can then modify the recipe to make it to what you think is best.”