High level chefs do not view recipes the same way those with less skills do. When you say “high level recipe” I assume you are talking about recipes in cookbooks written by chefs of the highest caliber. The recipes written in books of great chefs such as Ferran Adrià, Thomas Keller, Eric Ripert, Daniel Boloud, and Massimiliano Alajmo are not used by other chefs to follow. It is more of one master craftsman observing and acknowledging another master craftsman’s work. It is a common misconception that the words “chef” and “recipes” are related. The only time use a chef has for a recipe is when he needs to write one out himself for a book or for his line cooks to duplicate his work consistently.
If a chef does not use new recipes how would he ever create new food you might ask. Recipes are great for those who need inspiration and guidance while they travel their culinary path. At a certain point though, a cook begins to develop their own style of cooking that needs no inspiration from other chefs. With cooking being such the mystical craft that it is, cooks begin to find this inspiration in every area of life. The recipes they used in the past were guidelines that kept them structured while learning how to work with every ingredient and how to execute every technical skilled that now make them higher level chefs.
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