Cookie Science?

On the interplus, I came across an article from a food blog called the Food Lab, written by Kenji Lopez-Alt. The post I was interested in was about finding the recipe to create the optimal chocolate chip cookie; (a worthy quest, if there ever was one). Here is the post.

Why is the kitchen white? Is that 10 bags of flour? Have you stolen all that chocolate?! Where did these ovens come from?!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH MY SPOON??!!

I'm trying to make the best cookies in the world.

Oh, ok. Carry on.

The author wanted to find a deterministic way to create cookies exactly the way he preferred them. In an attempt to do this, he launches into an impressively detailed workdown off all the essential ingredients, came up with reasonable dependencies, and was far more thorough about the details of creating the treat than I have ever seen in a kitchen related incident.

Normally I would have had a nice little chuckle, drooled a little at the sumptous pictures, felt sad about not having my own unlimited supply of cookies and moved on. But I remembered a discussion I was having with some of the blogmates a while ago, and then I asked this question.

Is this science?

The answer, of course, depends on your definition of science. 
Is this rigorous science? Hardly. There are too many variables, unmeasurable uncertainties, and a general lack of repitition.

But is this the kind of science that we want to encourage?

Quite definitely so. The first step to creating scientists and promoting scientific inquiry in general, is to start making people think like scientists. 
The way scientists assess the world, analyse information presented to them, and make decisions is a fundamentally better way to think than the usual flawed way that we approach problems.
This isn't anyone's fault. Human thinking does have its limitations, but allowing thoughts to be subject to scientific reasoning allows us to spot and weed out the errors and make better choices.

Cookie science?
Bring it on!