The site for the book Cooking for Geeks, which explains cooking through science and engineering analogies, with posts on the book and ovens.
Commenters recommend the book as a good basic cooking guide that explains the science and uses analogies engineers will like.
A lot of things at play.
1) We actually can sense "coldness" or "hotness" as separate tastes. Think about mint candies or pepper for example.
2) Our receptors have different sensitivity based on the temperature. For example cold sweet drink feels much less sweet. That's why warm cola is disgustingly sweet for example.
And water does contain a lot of dissolved salts which have a taste.
3) More than half of the taste we feel is actually coming from the smell, and warm water contains more vapour, and therefore, more smell.
So our brain takes all these inputs from different sources and synthesises the feeling of taste in our brain.
Source of this knowledge is from: https://www.cookingforgeeks.com
My first introduction to the Maillard reaction was in "Cooking For Geeks", which turned me on to cooking. It was no longer (just) a chore but a science/chemistry experiment that ended up being tasty! I'm including the link here because maybe it'll do the same for others.
https://www.cookingforgeeks.com/
(I am in no way associated with the book or author; just a fan.)
The book I'm currently going through (after a year of using the techniques I learned as a kid to successfully follow random recipes) is Cooking for Geeks (http://cookingforgeeks.com). None of its advice is obviously wrong so far, and it's not telling me that I need every single kitchen gadget, which I like. But of course, I don't really know enough to know if it's wrong.
Pizza stones aren't just for cooking pizzas on. They help you maintain your oven temperature[1].
Also, IIRC, Alton Brown does use a pizza stone, but he recommends buying unglazed ceramic floor tiles as an alternative.
[1]https://www.cookingforgeeks.com/blog/posts/the-two-things-you-should-do-to-your-oven-right-now/
Instead of sticking to recipes, for many it's a better approach to learn what is going on behind the scenes.
"Cooking for Geeks", published by O'Reilly is a book that focuses on explaining cooking.
https://www.cookingforgeeks.com/
PS No affiliation.
Ditto. I actually asked my parents if they could help me get rid of some stuff as a Christmas gift. I did ask for one book though: http://www.cookingforgeeks.com/ Since it's formatting heavy, I'd rather have a hardcopy of it.