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The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’

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Re: The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’

#51

Post by carlmr »

I bake a few cakes regularly. Most of the recipes can be found online, but I usually have found some tweaks that make them taste better (subjective). So I make notes of them in my little book.

I think most recipes are derivative. You have to start somewhere when you make cornbread. So why not start with a standard recipe. Then you substitute some ingredients because you're missing something at home. You find it either tastes better or worse. Then you can improve the recipe.

In the end my cornbread recipe only has 2 different ingredients that give it better texture and better aroma. It's still almost the same recipe.

Re: The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’

#52

Post by heleph »

wincy wrote: post #46
emj wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is while recipes are facts and can be freely spread, prose about how to make cookies is copyrighted. So you get lots of recipes but the important instructions are losts, and people get used to the idea that a recipe is just ingredients and easy to follow steps. The results is lots of recipes that are pretty easy follow, but as always when a design meets a user someone is going to misinterpret your fool pr…

My wife and I always hate reading recipes online. We finally spent like $50 and bought three of the most amazing cookbooks. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, which explains how cooking works, Food Lab, and America’s Test Kitchen. I made a baked potato with a perfect inside and perfect crisp skin from the books, it involved like 4 steps of how to cook, like bathing them in a specific mixture of salt water, baking for 45 minutes,…

Food labs actually levelled up my cooking to the next level. So many great recipes and ideas. It was a very readable book too, I pretty much read it cover to cover. The best thing was buying a meat thermometer. Why did I cook for so long without it?

I’ll have to try your other recommendations now. :)

Re: The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’

#53

Post by empath75 »

A few years back, I was backpacking through Central America and spent a few weeks in the highlands of Guatemala staying with a Mayan family while taking Spanish lessons.

Part of the deal was you ate dinner with the family, and they cooked for you.

One of the first nights I was there, she made this amazing rice and meat dish, which I assumed was some kind of traditional Mayan thing, so I asked her what it was. After a few minutes of her struggling to understand my Spanish, she hopped up, walked into the kitchen and came back...

With a soy sauce bottle — on the side was a recipe for ‘stir fry’

Re: The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’

#54

Post by robaato »

Tade0 wrote: post #21

Here's an opposite example: I have a friend who has amazing grit[0]. One time he figured that the cheesecake he's making would use some improvement so he experimented with a sort of an evolutionary algorithm where he would change one or two things, note the results and combine some of the changes on another try(or that's how I understood his process). After over forty instances he has perfected the cheesecake. It's n…

Shades of the level Heston Blumenthal was prepared to go in terms of experimentation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Cooked_Chips

Various programmes showing the results of his experiments around.

Re: The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’

#55

Post by Shivetya »

white-flame wrote: post #3

My mom made the best pie crust anybody who ate it ever tasted. Her recipe came from a Crisco label. One of the steps specifically said to slowly stir a liquid into the mix with a fork. Everybody else who attempted the recipe used a spoon and didn't get anywhere near the proper texture. So her difference was simply that others wouldn't follow the directions exactly.

it never ceases to amaze me the people who won't follow a recipe then complain it is not a good recipe. the number of people whom I led down the road of cooking; this is especially true for techies who seem adverse or even scared to try; is quite long and it came down to one thing.

start with simple recipes. follow exactly.

then work your way to complex items and personal variations but the key to understanding cooking is to follow a recipe and see why it works.

if you want to scare yourself later go play with browning butter, reducing, and for real fun making candies

Re: The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’

#56

Post by MaxBarraclough »

Tade0 wrote: post #21

Here's an opposite example: I have a friend who has amazing grit[0]. One time he figured that the cheesecake he's making would use some improvement so he experimented with a sort of an evolutionary algorithm where he would change one or two things, note the results and combine some of the changes on another try(or that's how I understood his process). After over forty instances he has perfected the cheesecake. It's n…

> he has perfected the cheesecake

This assumes convexity, no? ;-P

Re: The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’

#57

Post by Steve44 »

zerocrates wrote: post #2

On the "fudge guy" who was using the recipe from the marshmallow container, or the Toll House cookies winning 2 of the top spots: there's a lot more to good results than just the recipe. Equipment, skill, the idiosyncratic ways you don't follow the recipe or fill in where it's underspecified... Don't necessarily give in to the temptation to ascribe the phenomenon merely to irrationality or sentiment. Plus, it must be…

I sometimes make tablet, a Scottish variation on fudge, and although the recipe is simple one of the most significant variables is the stirring once it's cooked. You need a very strong arm and patience to keep mixing as it crystallises, that's one of the 'secrets'

Re: The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’

#58

Post by wayanon »

blahedo wrote: post #17

I can do them one better: my family has a meta -secret recipe. It didn't used to be secret, but it became secret through no effort or intent of our own. For a long time, decades at this point, my mom has been known for the brownies she brings to events (and, by extension, that my sister and I bring to events). People would rave about them and demand the secret, which my mom, my sister, and I would all freely give out…

Your mother could walk into a boardroom job at any Fortune 100 company.

Re: The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’

#59

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

blahedo wrote: post #17

I can do them one better: my family has a meta -secret recipe. It didn't used to be secret, but it became secret through no effort or intent of our own. For a long time, decades at this point, my mom has been known for the brownies she brings to events (and, by extension, that my sister and I bring to events). People would rave about them and demand the secret, which my mom, my sister, and I would all freely give out…

So, mind sharing a formula for getting it right, irrespective of which version of the box one has? E.g., what the ideal quantity of mix is?
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