alchemy

The duo were an unusual pairing: Ball was the quiet technician, hunched over his keyboard, while Almond was a flamboyant showman, all glitter and eye-liner; but they achieved a rare musical alchemy.

That alchemy — the shift from experience to evidence — is what makes statistics both dry and radical.

The alchemy of creativity lets those forces coexist.

"You're taking bits of wood and metal, sheep's wool, felt and if you put them together in exactly the right sort of way, it's like alchemy, you get a beautiful, singing instrument," he says.

At its best, hollandaise is pure alchemy — with nothing more than butter, lemon, egg yolk, salt.