Epistemological.

The segment itself is strikingly straightforward. Like each of the other 104 skills, it takes place in a Spartan studio. This was no faux Connecticut kitchen, with pothos plants and chicken-shaped pottery in the background. “This was a reference work,” explains Stein, “so I wanted the set to be spare, clean, and abstract.” A few standing set pieces, sort of flattened columns, occupy the background. They are silk-screened with illustrations of kitchen ephemera (a clove of garlic, a knife, a rolling pin) that the set designer, Ron Haake, had modeled after Pépin’s own illustrations. There is no fancy camera work, just the three cameras rolling simultaneously, shooting to videotape, with few cuts—and the few that occur are purely functional. It’s almost Russian Ark–ian, avant-garde without trying to be.

“It was mostly continuous,” says Salter, “a lesson in its entirety.” Pépin’s language, though fluent, is plain, bordering on folksy. I counted only one simile, no metaphors, and a remarkable dearth of adjectives. It was all improvised, Pépin tells me. (“No, are you kidding?” he says when I ask. “There was never a script.”) And yet it’s a thing of flawless beauty to watch him narrate turning four eggs into two omelets.

And at the end, when he slices open the classic omelet to reveal quivering curds—“curd” in his accent, always singular—and a nice jazz piano riff comes in (the work of a local Bay Area pianist named Mike Greensill), one is moved in a way omelets rarely can. One is emotional. Why? Because as it turns out, Jacques Pépin isn’t teaching us how to make an omelet. He is giving us a lesson in epistemological certainty. This is what it is to know something so profoundly that the knowledge flows from you effortlessly, like water.

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