This article describes and discusses an experiment we carried out at El Celler de Can Roca, a vanguard restaurant in Girona, Spain. In this experiment we tested the possibility of characterizing and measuring our team's sensory capacity, arguing that research on the senses within experimental cooking should also include cultivation of sensible knowing. Our findings confirmed that instead of thinking about sensory capacities that reside in the individual alone, we should change our model for one that speaks of sensible skills where the communal is of crucial importance. Throughout our discussion we highlight awareness, imagination, and empathy as three important sensible skills for culinary practice, and make a final point about how such skills can be cultivated and taught to a restaurant's team.

Recipes are filled with sensory directions related to taste, appearance, texture, and smell, but less often to the sounds of food cooking. While cooking and eating, whether at home or in a restaurant, are recognized as sonic experiences, we are rarely specifically instructed to “listen in.” Some scholars argue that such skills cannot be written into recipes, but rather must be passed on in practice. While I largely agree with this claim, I was challenged to find exceptions in cookbooks. In this essay, I discuss some of the few but delightful examples of sonic instruction in recipes. I conclude that while sounds are rare in cookbooks, as these examples show, listening is a skill that provides valuable information in the kitchen.