> It was like following a baking recipe. I know I need to add eggs and sugar in the ratio it says but I’d be damned if I could tell you why that specific ratio works.

I know a french cookbook[0] which contains not only recipes for dishes, but also for some of the intermediary ingredients, like stocks, that can now be bought at the supermarket. I feel that I’ve learned a lot by following those recipes, be it simply in the structure of french cuisine. And to me, LFS is a cookbook in a similar sense.

[0]: https://www.ferrandi-paris.com/fr/le-grand-cours-de-cuisine-... in French, sorry!

Tangential, but how good/useful/approachable is the book you cited as example?

How would it compare, in your experience, to other (modern) cooking books with a similar scope?