Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes
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Once you figure out the science you can even freehand baking. Salt, flour, water yeast. Got a flour with more protein? Up the water and decrease the salt a little. Trying to make bread out of cake flour? Decrease the water a touch. Know what your target hydration level is for a bread type and you can pretty much wing the rest. Can’t do a double rise today? Do a slow rise in the fridge overnight. Want a slightly thicker crust? Add more salt. Baking has a lot of potential for freeform once you figure out the mechanics behind what goes into a recipe.
I’ve seen recipes that are based around the water content (I.e. put X ml of water and add flour until shaggy) so your comment makes a lot of sense.
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Great comment thread here! Just found this book…kind if a game-changer for me…
That’s on my wish list.
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i can assure you most of the world does not measure butter in pounds, we have 500g blocks here in sweden as well and i’d expect that to be the european standard at least.
The ~ was to indicate that it’s not actually that amount but close to that amount and the difference being the rounding error between metric and imperial
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Your grandma maybe
The average grandma. My grandma is 90 and grew up in a very different world.
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Great comment thread here! Just found this book…kind if a game-changer for me…
Thank you for sharing, was just thinking there needed to be some literature on simple cooking ratios. Looking forward to giving it a read
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During the previous round of shirkflation I warned people about knowing what year a recipe was from because “a can” means something different in 2004 than in 2010. And now it means something different again in 2025.
Now boxes are getting the shrink treatment too.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/618032
We had to go through my great grandmothers hand written recipes and add measurements because of things like this, all the way back in the 90s it was an issue. A can of cherries was several ounces larger than it was then, and I guess even worse now.
She also liked to do a lot of “Add flour until it’s sticky” so we just added “Start with x amount of cups of flour then add more as needed”
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The average grandma. My grandma is 90 and grew up in a very different world.
If your Grandma is 90, she definitely didn’t grow up in the 80’s.
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Have you seen people adding it to every Mexican or Italian slow cooker recipe?
I haven’t, no. I don’t use a slow cooker that much, and when I do, it’s with my own recipes. I assumed you were referring to baking from pre-mixes.
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I haven’t, no. I don’t use a slow cooker that much, and when I do, it’s with my own recipes. I assumed you were referring to baking from pre-mixes.
I’m thinking of all those cooking videos that you find on Facebook where people dump a bunch of stuff from bags and boxes and a brick of cream cheese into a slow cooker and call it cooking.
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If your Grandma is 90, she definitely didn’t grow up in the 80’s.
I said the average grandma because I was talking about the average instead of mine. Today an average grandma is someone who grew up in the '80s. This shouldn’t have gone on this long so I’m going to try to make this very clear. I was not talking about my grandmother. I’m talking about the average grandmother. The average grandmother grew up in a post kitchen era. They grew up as a latchkey kid in the '80s tossing things in the microwave. The vast majority of grandmas don’t know how to cook anymore.
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I’m thinking of all those cooking videos that you find on Facebook where people dump a bunch of stuff from bags and boxes and a brick of cream cheese into a slow cooker and call it cooking.
Oh, fair. I don’t have Facebook.
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Thank you for sharing, was just thinking there needed to be some literature on simple cooking ratios. Looking forward to giving it a read
I can’t speak to that book specifically and am not sure what the translation of Australian moneys to Freedom Units is, but 40 bucks for THIS sounds kinda… I wouldn’t go so far as to say “scammy” but I would definitely imply it.
Yes, baking and the like is almost entirely ratios. But you still have to understand how many parts fat and liquid butter is versus shortening versus lard versus… Yes, understanding those ratios makes it much easier to be flexible and you start realizing just how similar so many recipes are (and what the actual contribution of a given developer is). But that is more in the sense that you learn how similar two bread recipes actaully are as you make both.
The best way to actually learn that is to actually just cook and read through the recipes and make tweaks as you go. The second best way is to find instructors/youtubers who understand this and convey it. Kenji is going through some stuff lately but his older videos are spectacular for “Two parts flour to one part water but also this is the texture you actually want because humidity is a thing”. But Brian Lagerstrom (and Ethan Chlebowski when he is focusing more on cooking and less on weird wellness guru’ing) have more than taken up the burden. And while it is a few tiers lower, Made With Lau is actually amazing for learning how to translate “older” recipes into actionable steps.
And if you JUST want the ratios? Just go to the library and grab a few of the foundational cookbooks for a given cuisine and look at the recipes. THOSE are the ratios and… they are generally going to be REALLY close
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“we can’t have pancakes because I didn’t buy any mix” “What? Mix? You know you can just make that stuff on your own. Right?”
We have reached a point where, despite celebrity chefs existing, some people have zero idea that you can make stuff without a can of this, a block of cream cheese, a box of that and a bottle of this. They don’t know the first thing about cooking. To them pretzels are something you buy from someone else and sometimes you have to bake them yourself.
Ha, my kids thought this until just a couple years ago, as they approached college age. I did always use a mix for convenience, so they were hella surprised when I made it “from scratch “
For me, it’s not just the convenience of having the dry ingredients already proportioned to save me a little time, but that I don’t consistently have the basic ingredients. It’s easier to buy a box of pancake mix, than flour plus baking soda plus whatever else is in there
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I’ve shared my grandmothers recipe before, worth sharing again. Caution: Makes a metric fuckton of pancakes. Make for multiple people. You cannot eat this many pancakes.
1 Qt. Buttermilk
2 TBS Baking Soda
1 TBS Salt
4 Cups Flour
2 TBS Baking Powder
1 Pkg Dry Yeast
1/4 C. Oil
6 Eggs
1 cup of milk the next morning.Put 1 quart buttermilk in large bowl and add 2 TBS Baking SODA and 1 TBS Salt.
Mix 4 cups of flour with 2 TBS Baking POWDER, stir this mixture into the buttermilk.
Don’t mix up the SODA with the POWDER. You might not think it will make a difference, it does.
Add one package of dry yeast, 1/4 cup oil. Mix.
Whip 6 eggs till foamy, fold in mixture. Do not use electric mixer, use mixer tine by hand.
Pour batter into large pitcher or bowl. Cover with foil. Refrigerate overnight.
The next morning put a cup of milk in the pitcher to thin the batter.
Heat pan until hot. Add 3 TBS or so of oil, when water droplets sizzle in the pan it’s ready.
Cook pancakes in 2s or 3s. When the tops are covered in steam-holes then it’s ready to flip. 2 to 3 minutes or so. Can be as fast as 1 minute. Do not turn your back or they will burn.
Lasts 10 days to 2 weeks in fridge. Yeast will turn black over time, this is normal. Stir batter before use.
This is crazy, this is why I use a mix. Instead of having to buy all these ingredients, especially buttermilk that goes bad quickly. I can just buy a box and keep it on my shelf for months
A contributing factor of mixes is that many of us just don’t bake much anymore, don’t have regular use for the basic ingredients. Sure the basic ingrate cheaper but I don’t have any other uses for them
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Once you figure out the science you can even freehand baking. Salt, flour, water yeast. Got a flour with more protein? Up the water and decrease the salt a little. Trying to make bread out of cake flour? Decrease the water a touch. Know what your target hydration level is for a bread type and you can pretty much wing the rest. Can’t do a double rise today? Do a slow rise in the fridge overnight. Want a slightly thicker crust? Add more salt. Baking has a lot of potential for freeform once you figure out the mechanics behind what goes into a recipe.
Yes, but you need to be quite advanced for that. This is bakers knowledge, not housewives/homecook knowledge.
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Ha, my kids thought this until just a couple years ago, as they approached college age. I did always use a mix for convenience, so they were hella surprised when I made it “from scratch “
For me, it’s not just the convenience of having the dry ingredients already proportioned to save me a little time, but that I don’t consistently have the basic ingredients. It’s easier to buy a box of pancake mix, than flour plus baking soda plus whatever else is in there
For me the missing ingredient is always milk. But we have heavy cream for coffee so I can dilute that down. I’m starting to keep a pint bottle of ultra pasteurized milk in the fridge for occasions when I need milk. As long as those are sealed they keep for a very long time.
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This is crazy, this is why I use a mix. Instead of having to buy all these ingredients, especially buttermilk that goes bad quickly. I can just buy a box and keep it on my shelf for months
A contributing factor of mixes is that many of us just don’t bake much anymore, don’t have regular use for the basic ingredients. Sure the basic ingrate cheaper but I don’t have any other uses for them
The benefit of a mix is “I want pancakes now.” Grammas recipe needs 1 day of planning.
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I didn’t learn to measure anything until I was 30. I just cooked by vibes. My girlfriend started getting really irritated that I would make something and she would never have it again. Something like it? Sure. But it? No. So I started actually learning how to cook and know how much was going in .
That’s the way I cook, just have made enough mistakes and so many different dishes I can put things together and make magic. On baking, my family doesn’t like fancy cakes, more like snacking cakes, those are pretty forgiving. I don’t measure rice & water, just know how it should look, and yes my husband sometimes gets annoyed that it’s not more standardized but I’m not a commercial chef I am a cook.
The exceptions - My sourdough bread, and the sourdough chocolate chip cookies - carefully measured by weight and if I am winging the bread (never the cookies) I try to still write down the measurements in case it’s the best bread I have ever made. The bread I could almost certainly make it without measuring at this point, I can tell by how it feels, what it will do, but have the scale and use it.
My mom cooked from recipes. Only from recipes . She asked her mom once how to make good biscuits, and her mom said “the water has to be very cold”. Which, honestly, would have helped me a lot. But my mom wanted a recipe!
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I’d look to see if there is a different veg I could add to fill out the quarter pound. Like maybe some raw carrots could be chopped and added to the cauliflower And if they’re cut to the right size they’ll cook them the same amount of time.
I hate beets as vegetables but shredded beets in chocolate cake will fix it just like the carrot fixes the spice cake.
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I can’t speak to that book specifically and am not sure what the translation of Australian moneys to Freedom Units is, but 40 bucks for THIS sounds kinda… I wouldn’t go so far as to say “scammy” but I would definitely imply it.
Yes, baking and the like is almost entirely ratios. But you still have to understand how many parts fat and liquid butter is versus shortening versus lard versus… Yes, understanding those ratios makes it much easier to be flexible and you start realizing just how similar so many recipes are (and what the actual contribution of a given developer is). But that is more in the sense that you learn how similar two bread recipes actaully are as you make both.
The best way to actually learn that is to actually just cook and read through the recipes and make tweaks as you go. The second best way is to find instructors/youtubers who understand this and convey it. Kenji is going through some stuff lately but his older videos are spectacular for “Two parts flour to one part water but also this is the texture you actually want because humidity is a thing”. But Brian Lagerstrom (and Ethan Chlebowski when he is focusing more on cooking and less on weird wellness guru’ing) have more than taken up the burden. And while it is a few tiers lower, Made With Lau is actually amazing for learning how to translate “older” recipes into actionable steps.
And if you JUST want the ratios? Just go to the library and grab a few of the foundational cookbooks for a given cuisine and look at the recipes. THOSE are the ratios and… they are generally going to be REALLY close
The best way to actually learn that is to actually just cook and read through the recipes and make tweaks as you go. The second best way is to find instructors/youtubers who understand this and convey it.
My favorite ice cream cookbook has like six recipes across 150 pages. It explains why those recipes work the way they do (milkfat percentages and cooking temperatures) and then it’s just variations on the recipes in different flavors. I’ve broken like seven ice cream machines getting it right and it’s been worth it.
