What's So Great About 350 Degrees?
Machines standardize all kinds of behaviors—including how people prepare meals.
The machines of modern meal-making are tools of considerable precision. This is the age of bluetooth-enabled meat thermometers and smartphone-powered toaster ovens, devices that reflect the idea that food-making is more science than art.
This isn’t new. The latest kitchen machinery merely builds on a longstanding obsession with culinary exactness—a fixation that’s long been shaped by emerging technologies. Microwaves count down by the second. Ovens automatically preheat to 350 degrees with the press of a button.
Or, they seem to, anyway.
In fact, different ovens set to the same temperature can vary by as much as 90 degrees, . And even over time.)
