"Dee Randall" > wrote in message
...

> Just a thought, perhaps Cook's Illustrated started the new fad of
> 'deconstructed' recipes.
> Dee Dee

That is a good description of what they do. Sometimes I think that it is
appropriate. However, I get the feeling that Cook's Illustrated and Alton
Brown sometimes reverse engineer things to justify their particular niche.
It is a matter of goal inversion. At first it reasonable to deconstruct
things to illustrate a point of fix a problem. Later, the deconstruction
takes place just because that is what they do. I have see them do things
and justify the use of weird equipment that makes things harder, or at least
seems to have a very, very small incremental return for the amount of effort
and/or expense exerted.