He’s no cook. “I can boil water for pasta,” says Fred Caporaso, Ph.D., food science professor,  Schmid College of Science.

But Dr. Caporaso, whose expertise has taken him everywhere from the labs of Baskin-Robbins to the set of MythBusters, is the featured expert in a full-page story on the science of professional food tasting in the new issue of Fine Cooking magazine. Dr. Caporaso was tapped by food writer Kelly Alexander to discuss how taste panels are trained and why they are critical to food companies eager to cook up new products with the right flavor and sensory properties consumers demand.

The feature also includes a dapper caricature of the professor decked out in lab coat and tie, an amusing portrayal, says Caporaso, whose daily attire tends toward T-shirts, often emblazoned with images of his beloved turtles, Charles Darwin and the Galapagos Islands. And we should all be thankful that Dr. Caporaso didn’t share recipes or cooking tips with the glossy magazine, which features a fabulous Brown Butter Pumpkin Layer Cake on its cover.

“I just don’t even go there,” he said, chuckling.