In fact I would go further and say that this stuff is more fundamental. Online recipes make cooking look mysterious and complicated when they're actually "cook each ingredient in the obvious way, measure with your heart, combine the things that go together, and assemble the final dish." It's not "easy just re-derive the formula when you need it" like you see in maths, it's that most dishes you don't need a recipe at all.

Baking is the only thing that requires some science know-how but it has its own building blocks [1] that demystify overly complicated recipes.

There aren't that many "shapes" of dishes.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Ratio-Simple-Behind-Everyday-Cooking/...

Ruhlman's "Ratio" is a good approach to this

My peeve with the book is that he (IMHO correctly) tells the reader to use weights not volumes for dry ingredients, then in the entire rest of the book seems to promote/use volume measures.

https://www.amazon.com/Ratio-Simple-Behind-Everyday-Cooking/...

> Its a bit like cooking - the cookbooks for the peasants give recipes. The ones for the chefs give mechanics and techniques.

See eg http://www.amazon.com/Ratio-Simple-Behind-Everyday-Cooking/d...

If you find this appealing, you'll probably fall in love with _Ratio_:

http://www.amazon.com/Ratio-Simple-Behind-Everyday-Cooking/d...