Good tip for potatoes, too. I first read it in a Jacques Pepin cookbook.
This made me jealous that we don’t have a “spinster chow.” 
we really need to reclaim that term.
Hear, hear! Or, if they keep it, only people who meet the criteria of those silly “econs” they use in their models get to vote (so, basically no one).
Seconded! Economics is trying so hard to be a science but it’s still all just a bunch of people guessing about how things work in untestable ways, and making whole lot of unfalsifiable statements based on things every child knows isn’t true (“people are rational actors!”). That’s not to say it isn’t a valuable and important field of study. It absolutely is. But I think calling it science is a reach.
I blame Futurama for the term, more or less- it’s a reasonably fast to prepare meal which, in my case, is a box of mac and cheese (Although I’ve been known to cook pasts and add a brick of Velveeta and a half cup of milk if I’m feeling sassy) with some form of meat (tuna, chunked chicken, diced spam or ham, or even vienna sausages), and steamed vegetables mixed in.
Spinster chow would work, too- technically, I’m not married, have no kids (unless you count cats!) and I’m approaching my fifth decade on this rock.
I have some pedantic disagreement with that definition of science, but ok, close enough. You make a big leap to claim that science is like the history of cooking, and I think you are extending this to an idea that professional chefs are therefor scientific authorities and practicing science in their approach.
My point is that many chefs are NOT cooking with a scientific mindset. So the fact that they are a professional chef doesn’t automatically make them right about the best way to cook a thing. When they come with reproducible experiments and empirical data like Kenji then THAT counts more than credentials that they work in a kitchen.
To expand on another point from my original reply, professional chefs cook under constraints that do not always produce the best result, but a result that is good and efficient for their work.
I do agree that cooking advances through time and tends to get better, and chefs collectively pick up those improvements.
I don’t think I disagree much with what you’re saying, but to me it felt framed like a refutation? I could have misread the intent of this response, IDK. It feels to me like we are two people who are arguing in agreement with each other 
As a professional chef who trained at the Culinary institute of America, I can tell you that chefs are very much doing basic science. They aren’t necessarily knowledgeable about the underlying chemistry, but when they change the ratio of vinegar in a pickling brine they are well aware of what should happen as a result. What would you call baking a recipe 12 times with slight variations to see what makes the cookies too brown, too flat, too puffy etc. except science?
Every good line cook knows which methods work for them in any given kitchen, even if they can’t articulate the chemistry behind them. But those cooks are fewer and fewer in professional kitchens these days. Most people have some classroom training and most of them are there because they are curious and passionate about food. They will go home and research an ingredient or process, and try out their new ideas until they reach the desired result.
So not necessarily a refutation, but an explanation of how the thought process works in a kitchen. Kenji crafts his explanations of the science after he sees the results of his trials and figures out what was happening.
I mean, there are even scientists who study food and the making of it…
I always loved when she showed up on Good Eats!
She was so knowledgeable and such an utter delight!
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