Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: I Derived a Pancake

absurdlyoptimized.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 147 posts

Re: Show HN: I Derived a Pancake

#91

Post by chrysoprace »

bkazez wrote: post #83
chrysoprace wrote: post #30

Awesome work. I'm really interested in the parametric-driven recipe card. I wanted to do something like this for bread recipes where you can tweak the hydration / salt levels to alter the recipe but still get a traditional recipe card. I would be really curious to hear about the approach in more detail.

Thanks a lot! Good idea re bread - can you link me to your favorite more general recipes that show all the extremes/variables? I've skimmed some bread textbooks re enriched doughs and have made some Italian breads with sourdough starters, enriched doughs like challah, and once tried the NYT Dutch oven bread, but I don't make bread as often as I make pancakes.

The Sourdough Framework[0] is a really good book that specifically deals with sourdough, but has some good maths and theory. It actually doesn't have many recipes, but it's a good read. The author has a pizza calculator[1] too, which only has two variables (dough weight and hydration).

[0] https://github.com/hendricius/the-sourdough-framework

[1] https://pizza-calculator.the-bread-code.io/

Re: Show HN: I Derived a Pancake

#92

Post by raphman »

raphman wrote: post #88
jamessb wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it reads like Claude output Yep. From the site's about page: > This site is produced with substantial help from large language models: they assist with the literature search, the drafting, and the arithmetic. https://www.absurdlyoptimized.com/about/ > how much scrutiny did this get for accuracy? The inclusion of references without hyperlinks suggests it wasn't thoroughly checked: they were probably put there by Cla…

FWIW, the author writes: > " Ovalbumin coagulates irreversibly at 80°C (Weijers et al., 2003), permanently setting the foam structure." , and the paper by Weijers et al. says: > "A strong temperature dependence on the reaction rate was observed. At 80°C, half of the protein was denatured and aggregated in less than 2 min (half-time, th), while at 68.5°C this took approximately 6 h." So, the citation is generally true…

Addendum:

> "Cast iron and carbon steel have nearly identical thermal conductivity (~52 W/m·K), which surprises most people."

is unsourced. And the precise "~52" is quite misleading - Wikipedia and online sources report thermal conductivities in the range of ~30-50¹.

Also:

> "Critically, whipped egg white foam drainage follows a hyperbolic saturation curve: v = V × t / (B + t), where V is the maximum drained volume and B is the drainage half-life (Lomakina & Mikova, 2006)."

As far as I can tell, the article² (cited twice for this claim) does not contain any equations modelling drainage over time, and especially not this equation or the term "hyperbolic".

So, it seems that you cannot really trust the sources the author's LLM included. For me, that means that I cannot trust any of the other claims in the article (or the author in general).

¹) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_thermal_conductivities

²) https://www.agriculturejournals.cz/pdfs/cjf/2006/03/02.pdf

Re: Show HN: I Derived a Pancake

#94

Post by Ntrails »

thechao wrote: post #3

A ten hour wait doesn't really strike me as a pancake? You should have a "it's 730am, there's four screaming girls, only two of which are related to me, the dogs are begging for scraps, and the demand for pancakes has crossed into Veblen goods territory."

Man, at the rate I can generate pancakes I fear four children would murder me and just drink the batter raw. Though maybe I'd buy a second pan in advance xD

Re: Show HN: I Derived a Pancake

#95

Post by my_throwaway23 »

Perhaps you could add a classic Swedish take on pancakes/crepes - whisk a moderate numbers of eggs with milk (4 eggs for every litre of milk is a good starting point, but dealers choice), flour until a nice consistency, fry in a pan until they're your chosen colour of done. Serve with strawberry jam, or any sweet condiment of your choice.

Edit: Also, what in the name of all that's holy - looking beyond the generator, this entire article is amazing. Absurd level of detail for pancakes, yes, but amazing.

Re: Show HN: I Derived a Pancake

#96

Post by bkazez »

my_throwaway23 wrote: post #95

Perhaps you could add a classic Swedish take on pancakes/crepes - whisk a moderate numbers of eggs with milk (4 eggs for every litre of milk is a good starting point, but dealers choice), flour until a nice consistency, fry in a pan until they're your chosen colour of done. Serve with strawberry jam, or any sweet condiment of your choice. Edit: Also, what in the name of all that's holy - looking beyond the generator,…

Love it, thanks! I used to have a "fluffiness" slider that I could bring back to power this. I haven't researched Swedish pancakes yet but are they leavened at all?

Re: Show HN: I Derived a Pancake

#97

Post by my_throwaway23 »

bkazez wrote: post #96
my_throwaway23 wrote: post #95

Perhaps you could add a classic Swedish take on pancakes/crepes - whisk a moderate numbers of eggs with milk (4 eggs for every litre of milk is a good starting point, but dealers choice), flour until a nice consistency, fry in a pan until they're your chosen colour of done. Serve with strawberry jam, or any sweet condiment of your choice. Edit: Also, what in the name of all that's holy - looking beyond the generator,…

Love it, thanks! I used to have a "fluffiness" slider that I could bring back to power this. I haven't researched Swedish pancakes yet but are they leavened at all?

No, not at all. They're a classic comfort food, usually made quite thin, but not thin enough to be called crepes, and I'd wager most people don't learn through a recipe, but, similar to you, it's some of the first things you're taught to make.

There's also another classic, this time leavened - the oven-baked pancake, which is a little closer to the American pan-fried, but with pieces of salted pork, served with lingon berry jam.

Eggs, milk, flour, baking powder (ratio to taste), salted pork; bake in a tall container at 180-220C (again, to your preferred crispiness and colour). In the end, you should have something almost akin to a pudding, Fluffiness depends on baking powder, of course, and temperature.

Re: Show HN: I Derived a Pancake

#98

Post by exmadscientist »

bkazez wrote: post #81
rendaw wrote: post #75

I like the table layout, with ingredients in a column, and rows being steps. It feels like a "best of both worlds" solution. I'd kind of like to have a list of "baseline required" ingredients though too, to know what to keep around.

Thanks! The layout was inspired by the way my mother recopied her recipes. When I first saw how most recipe books wrote recipes, I was so confused! As for baseline ingredients, it's basically (any liquidy dairy) + (everything else in the recipe). I'll think on how to present this better, thanks for the feedback!

Obviously you ripped it off from my comment a while back https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42121502 :)

Seriously though, it's a good format! It works!

Re: Show HN: I Derived a Pancake

#99

Post by bkazez »

my_throwaway23 wrote: post #97
bkazez wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love it, thanks! I used to have a "fluffiness" slider that I could bring back to power this. I haven't researched Swedish pancakes yet but are they leavened at all?

No, not at all. They're a classic comfort food, usually made quite thin, but not thin enough to be called crepes, and I'd wager most people don't learn through a recipe, but, similar to you, it's some of the first things you're taught to make. There's also another classic, this time leavened - the oven-baked pancake, which is a little closer to the American pan-fried, but with pieces of salted pork, served with lingo…

Ah, I know about these big tall pancakes! I've had something like that in the Netherlands and grew up eating something like it too.

I'll soon add a fluffiness slider back in so that at the lowest end, it tries to produce something close to crêpes, and you can tell me if it is like the Swedish recipes. Thanks for the international perspective!

Post reply on HN