The Pleasures of Reading Computer Code
Looking at source code opens doors in the mind
There’s a strange pleasure in reading a recipe.
Even if you never cook it. Maybe especially if you never even plan to cook it!
Back in 2013, the author Bee Wilson pondered this phenomenon while reviewing the William Sitwell book A History of Food in 100 Recipes. As Wilson noted, many of these recipes were incredibly ornate — like a lamb korma by Madhur Jaffrey “with an ingredient list that goes on for more than a page”. So they weren’t necessarily the meals you’d immediately rush out to make. Indeed, you might never make them at all.
Even so, as Wilson argued, merely reading such sumptuous, byzantine recipes serves another purpose: They “stimulate our imagination”.
It’s fun to imagine — “hmmm, what would be it be like if I made this dish? How much fun would it be? What would the tricky parts be, and what new skills would it require?”
You don’t need to actually make the food to experience these delights. Reading a cookbook, Wilson notes, is thus like wandering through a mental castle of possibilities …
The vast majority of the recipes we read are hypothetical. I’ve spent more hours than I care to count this year staring at an April Bloomfield recipe…
