Cooking makes us better cooks.
Edit: I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
Edit: I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
We watch something, think of something, read something.
Then we try it out in practice.
Then we observe or have someone else observe the practice and result.
Then we take suggestions and improvements into account from that observation.
Then we start over at one of the points above.
If you only just repeat the "practice" step you'll get set in your ways, get used to doing the same mistakes all over, etc.
And, of course, "there is no accounting for taste" meaning that some of the aforementioned dimensions are very subjective.
People don't do blind taste tests when they cook. They cook something and compare it to their previous memory. Then they slowly diverge and enter some crazy part of the space where no one should be cooking an ingredient that way. There's no notion of something tasting right on its own. You need to compare it against a better version of that dish.
It's easy for two people to cook exactly the same dish, following the same recipe, both of them to think it came out great, and then when they taste each other's to discover that one is dramatically better.
You can practice at something incorrectly, building bad habits, which can make you worse.
See also the idea of "Deliberate Practice":
I studied a few recipes (such as Indian curry) and identified the fundamental ingredients (onions, garlic, ginger, tomatoes, spices, and protein), creating a list of non-basic spices and other potential ingredients.
I mastered the process of this basic recipe: browning the onions with cumin and bay leaf, no salt, adding garlic and the remaining spices, introducing tomatoes with salt, then adding vegetable stock and protein, and cooking until finished.
From there, I began experimenting with additional spices, ingredients, vegetables (almost anything works), and proteins (beans, lentils, peas, etc.)
Always stick to the basics. Many recipes out there are needlessly complex. After all, you can make almost anything taste delicious with just onions, fat, salt, and pepper.
I'd recommend the book 'Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat' – I've only skimmed it, but it seems to ring true.