My brother set out to copy out mother's pie dough recipe, so had her do it in front of him. He recorded every measurement, each step of the creation process, but it didn't work. The result was a perfectly serviceable pie crust, but noticeably inferior to our mom's. Maybe the humidity in the kitchen, or subtle changes in rolling style... mom could do it every time and we couldn't copy it.

The truth is, we were trying to short cut past the effort involved of mastery by making hundreds of pies over decades...