To this point, you can make cake mix. It’s flour, sugar, leavening agents or yeast / baking powder, salt, and anti-clumping agents / preservatives.

Just take 10 minutes and mix that shit together yourself and leave out the preservatives. You’ll get a better cake and recipe worth passing down.

I blame processed food manufacturers for turning cookbooks from instruction manuals into marketing vehicles. A recipe that requires 2 eggs, 450g of flour and Uncle Whizbang’s Special Baking Powder is an ad, and not a recipe.

For this reason I’ve started collecting vintage cookbooks that are actual culinary manuals, and not advertising that you pay for.

I get what you are saying, because a lot of those recipes were magazine ads or from the package themselves, but name brand does sometimes help.

Trying to make some recipes from the UK in North America was a challenge, because self rising flour brand Y is different than self rising flour brand X.

And if you counter with “just make your own self rising flour” Then you have to check is it Canadian Flour or American Flour, because the Canadian Flour has much higher protein and absorbs more water. And the rising agents vary.

But those “recipes” fall apart if the brand changes internal ingredients.