Preface: The article describes the difference between a culinary professionals and food scientists.
When developing food products, culinary professionals and food scientists often have different priorities. A culinary professional will think about the senses when looking at a creation - taste, texture, aroma, and appearance - while the scientist would likely first consider stability, shelf life, and packaging.
Culinary professionals have knowledge of foods that cannot be measured by analytical instruments. For example, they are highly skilled in judging individual raw materials. They recognize "fresh" by sight, touch, or smell.
Although a culinary professional may possess detailed knowledge of raw materials, he or she would not necessarily know how, for example, to keep the ingredients from lumping in commercial food packages. Traditionally, they are fortunate to be creating food that is eaten much sooner after preparation than a grocery product will be. In a restaurant, the chef is not usually required to consider food packaging, storage, and reheating in the same manner as would be encountered in a manufactured food.
