In America's Test Kitchen (Photo: Elizabeth Hathaway)

I kept waiting for the call, “Camera, Rolling, Action!”

A mix of Boston bloggers and myself were in America’s Test Kitchen, the set where all the magic happens for the most watched cooking show on public television, and where all the recipes for Cook’s Illustrated magazine are painstakingly tested. Right there was Christopher Kimball, editor and founder of the whole Brookline-based cooking conglomerate, who had before this been a mere black in white head-shot in my collection of Cook’s Illustrated issues.

Based on the number of tweets issuing from this tech-savvy crowd, the other bloggers at this Brookline mixer on Wednesday night were similarly enthralled. (The Broiled Shrimp Cocktail with Coriander and Lemon wasn’t a bad touch, either.)

The purpose of this organized mixer was two-pronged: first, to reach out to the Boston blogger community in an acknowledgment of their influence over the habits and tastes of Boston-area foodies; and, to promote the new Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook, a comprehensive edition of 20 years’ worth of Cook’s Illustrated magazine-tested recipes.

Inviting the online community to the test kitchens was a first for Christopher Kimball. Like many corporations who already have a good thing going, the changing social media landscape presents a major challenge to ATK. As Kimball admitted, up until last year they hadn’t done anything by way of social media. “I grew up with direct marketing, and I think that still works,” Kimball told me. “But I think now the world is becoming more and more about indirect marketing.”

Christopher Kimball, Editor and Founder of America's Test Kitchen (Photo: Elizabeth Hathaway)

As many of you know and already have experienced, social media has become an increasingly important way that we decide what to make in our kitchen and how to make it. Social media platforms, such as blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, have invaded our kitchens, becoming a way for home chefs and foodies to form relationships and exchange information with each other. Not to mention, there is nothing more satisfying than logging into your Facebook or Twitter accounts to be one of the first to find out about, or write about, a new restaurant, a cut-rate promo or a new food trend.

Hence the problem for America’s Test Kitchen. Their whole company is built on the idea of finding the single best way to approach the fundamentals of cooking — a bottom line promise that gained them such a devoted following in the first place. The 2,000 recipes in this anniversary cookbook have been through the wringer of ATK’s exacting standards and are being presented as the recipes that really, actually work. They are the result of objective, comprehensive and scientific testing principles, not opinion and discussion — the traits off of which social media thrives.

Yet, as Wednesday’s mixer proved, the two aren’t necessarily at odds. In this age of information overload, sometimes it’s comforting to turn to a source you know you can trust — one that has made the mistakes for you, as America’s Test Kitchen likes to say. And if we know Christopher Kimball and his team, they will test this social media thing over and over- and then over again- until they have found the best way to approach its fundamentals, with a positive results guarantee.

Broiled Shrimp Cocktail with Coriander and Lemon (Photo: Elizabeth Hathaway)