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Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

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Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#41

Post by sevensor »

gwd wrote: post #16
mh- wrote: post #4

> “It’s just so upsetting,” says Judith, whose cookie recipe was passed down by her mother. These “perfect little cookies” once made the rounds at bake sales, Christmas cookie exchanges, and birthdays. > a box of Betty Crocker chocolate cake mix, two eggs, and 1/3 cup neutral oil I realize it's not the point of the story, but this is like that Friends episode[0] where Phoebe finds out her grandmother's secret cookie…

Speaking as an American, this is a part of American culture that's so weird -- using a pre-made mix as a base for a recipe that it's not designed for. That recipe looks like it just has flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt pre-mixed (with a load of other garbage you probably don't need). People don't seem to realize that you can just buy those ingredients yourself. It doesn't take that much extra time to meas…

Do you, does anybody, actually eat Campbell’s concentrated Cream of Mushroom Soup? It’s nominally a soup, but it’s designed to be an ingredient. It’s the foundation of all our favorite gloppy casseroles.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#42

Post by pessimizer »

brian-armstrong wrote: post #39
gwd wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as an American, this is a part of American culture that's so weird -- using a pre-made mix as a base for a recipe that it's not designed for. That recipe looks like it just has flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt pre-mixed (with a load of other garbage you probably don't need). People don't seem to realize that you can just buy those ingredients yourself. It doesn't take that much extra time to meas…

This sounds like the argument people make against Hawaiian food. Why use Spam! You can eat real food you know! Thing is, once something has been done a certain way, it becomes a tradition in its own right. It doesn't really matter how it got to be that way, but once people have nostalgia for it, they want to keep doing it the same way.

Spam is a hell of a lot harder to make than cake mix. Cake mix is literally just measuring, and what was in the box when your mom made it isn't from the same suppliers, or probably of the same quality, as what's in the box now.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#43

Post by brian-armstrong »

pessimizer wrote: post #42
brian-armstrong wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like the argument people make against Hawaiian food. Why use Spam! You can eat real food you know! Thing is, once something has been done a certain way, it becomes a tradition in its own right. It doesn't really matter how it got to be that way, but once people have nostalgia for it, they want to keep doing it the same way.

Spam is a hell of a lot harder to make than cake mix. Cake mix is literally just measuring, and what was in the box when your mom made it isn't from the same suppliers, or probably of the same quality, as what's in the box now.

But these bakers don't want "cake mix", they want the specific Betty Crocker cake mix

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#44

Post by apparent »

stephen_g wrote: post #26
lbourdages wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that there is a greater incentive to shrink than to inflate prices. Or at least, to do a combination of the two. Price-conscious consumers will probably choose the shrunk item over another brand that increased their price, even though the price per unit might be the same.

Do you have price per unit on the price tags in your grocery stores? They have to show that by law in my country, not sure if it makes a huge difference because not everyone knows to compare though.

Some stores where I live have this, but others don't. And at some stores that do show it, the only reasonable prices are the items that are "on sale". And the sale prices don't have the price per unit, of course.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#45

Post by nanolith »

Much to the chagrin of my mother, I made it a point about a decade ago to standardize old family recipes on "from scratch" versions. As part of the process, I also did some research on old recipes and fixed some of the corruption of these recipes that occurred during the copying and recitation, bolstering them with culinary techniques that were in use at the time. I also captured things that drift over time, such as crude protein and carbohydrate measurements and grind sizes in flour. I provided standardized weights and measurements, in MKS units, preferring mass, when possible, over volume.

She's upset that the recipes are different, but when it comes to recipes from the thirties and later based on using a box of this or a can of that, these recipes are resistant to shrinkflation. The downside is that these recipes miss out on the advanced chemistry that went into making these boxed mixes so great to begin with. But, in my opinion, that's a small price to pay for reproducibility.

Some recipes, like cakes and cookies, will need to be adjusted once a generation. For these recipes, I include notes about how to tell when certain ingredients are "off" so that these can be re-calibrated as ingredients change in the future. Ingredients change. Some are no longer available. Others are derived from newer varieties or hybrids that have different flavor profiles. For instance, bananas taste differently than they did sixty years ago. That old and dusty banana pudding recipe meant to reproduce that amazing pudding that your great-grandmother used to make won't taste the same unless you adjust the amount of isoamyl acetate; modern varieties have less of this compound than the old Gros Michel varieties did. You can occasionally find Gros Michel bananas if you want to taste the difference, but they are no longer a viable cash crop due to their susceptibility to Panama disease.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#46

Post by Xcelerate »

gwd wrote: post #16
mh- wrote: post #4

> “It’s just so upsetting,” says Judith, whose cookie recipe was passed down by her mother. These “perfect little cookies” once made the rounds at bake sales, Christmas cookie exchanges, and birthdays. > a box of Betty Crocker chocolate cake mix, two eggs, and 1/3 cup neutral oil I realize it's not the point of the story, but this is like that Friends episode[0] where Phoebe finds out her grandmother's secret cookie…

Speaking as an American, this is a part of American culture that's so weird -- using a pre-made mix as a base for a recipe that it's not designed for. That recipe looks like it just has flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt pre-mixed (with a load of other garbage you probably don't need). People don't seem to realize that you can just buy those ingredients yourself. It doesn't take that much extra time to meas…

Homemade cake mixes rarely win blind taste tests against box mix. I baked two cakes with and without glycerol monostearate—it really does make a difference.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#47

Post by cptskippy »

I wish they would just increase the price. The shrinking can sizes have messed quite a few of my recipes.

It's deceptive and people know something is off. I personally don't have the energy to figure out what's up and don't want 3/4 of a can of something sitting in the fridge.

My response is to just stop making broken recipes which means I stop buying those products entirely as they have lost their value and my trust.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#48

Post by tzs »

jhawk28 wrote: post #23
neilv wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had the tiniest nagging confusion about that... From what I recall, it seemed pretty common to use the recipe on the bag of chocolate chips, yet somehow each family's cookies came out different. My mom's instantiation of the bag recipe, for example, were pretty consistent across runs, yet not quite like anyone else's (that you're exposed to at friends' houses, school birthdays, bake sales, church potlucks, famil…

Two main mistakes that people make: 1. "scoop and dump" approach to flour. Flour should be spooned into the measuring cup so its not packed in. 2. over-baking cookies due to cooking too long or oven that is too hot or not hot enough.

Or measure flour by weight instead of volume.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#49

Post by frainfreeze »

nanolith wrote: post #45

Much to the chagrin of my mother, I made it a point about a decade ago to standardize old family recipes on "from scratch" versions. As part of the process, I also did some research on old recipes and fixed some of the corruption of these recipes that occurred during the copying and recitation, bolstering them with culinary techniques that were in use at the time. I also captured things that drift over time, such as…

Very interesting! Have you by any chance shared the recepies anywhere?

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#50

Post by zurtri »

nanolith wrote: post #45

Much to the chagrin of my mother, I made it a point about a decade ago to standardize old family recipes on "from scratch" versions. As part of the process, I also did some research on old recipes and fixed some of the corruption of these recipes that occurred during the copying and recitation, bolstering them with culinary techniques that were in use at the time. I also captured things that drift over time, such as…

Thank you for this. I had never considered this "drift" in recipes and ingredients.
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