Artistry comes in many forms, and if you ask certain chefs—especially professional ones—they might even say that they view cooking as an art form. To many top chefs in the world, food is their canvas, and the kitchen is their stage. And for us customers who eat their food, well… we’re just spectators along for the ride. Here’s why cooking is very much like an art form.
The Need For Balance
In pretty much all forms of artistic expression, there’s a need for balance. In music, instruments must have a proper balance in dynamics, tone, and composition. In art, the colors and texture must interact in a way that makes sense. It’s exactly the same way with cooking. The relationships between the different foods are no different than the relationships between instruments, colors, or voices.
The Intangibles
All good art needs a healthy balance between tangible, measurable rules, and intangible qualities that are hard to describe. Just like you can’t exactly describe the color green—you just appreciate it—so too you can’t really explain the exact properties of the taste of an apple. Sure, you can talk about how sweet it is, or other various criteria—but the inherent nature of its taste is essentially impossible to put into words. Cooking involves thinking like an artist sometimes and combining certain flavors because it just “feels” right, even if you can’t always explain why.
