There are also cases where the thing the chefs were doing was correct, even if they didn't know why or had the wrong reason. This is both the pro and the con of tradition-based crafts.
Anyway where were they even to get this information? Kenji has been influential the last few years, and he builds very heavily off of McGee, which came out in the mid 80s. It's been only like two generations of chefs here since evidence like this was even partially available.
Before that, and still mostly, the intersection of science and cooking is driven by the needs of the industrial food system. Whether you can apply that to restaurant cooking probably depends a lot on your personal background and skill set, but most cooks I've worked with would be lost trying to read an academic food science paper and apply it to their work. I definitely would be.
Anyway where were they even to get this information? Kenji has been influential the last few years, and he builds very heavily off of McGee, which came out in the mid 80s. It's been only like two generations of chefs here since evidence like this was even partially available.
Before that, and still mostly, the intersection of science and cooking is driven by the needs of the industrial food system. Whether you can apply that to restaurant cooking probably depends a lot on your personal background and skill set, but most cooks I've worked with would be lost trying to read an academic food science paper and apply it to their work. I definitely would be.