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Early Modern Recipes (1600-1800) in a Modern Kitchen

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Re: Early Modern Recipes (1600-1800) in a Modern Kitchen

#21

Post by yincrash »

devindotcom wrote: post #5

Boy, that beef roll looks great. I definitely need to give that one a try. These kinds of historical recipes are always fascinating to me. Some survive and are still quite good - my girlfriend made a middle eastern dish that apparently hasn't changed in a long, long time (shakshouka) and it turned out surprisingly complex and wonderful.

I actually just cooked shaksouka tonight. It's interesting to note that tomatoes are natively American and didn't even make it to the middle east until the late 1700s.

Re: Early Modern Recipes (1600-1800) in a Modern Kitchen

#22

Post by jmenn »

The cutoff at 1800 seems odd given Louis Eustace Ude's _The French Cook_ comes out in French in 1813, and had a strong foothold in England prior to 1800. [1] If I understand correctly, he was also one of the first to bring what we now consider modern gastronomic techniques into British cooking. He may present an interesting case study for the period before Grimod and Brillat-Savarin.

http://www.cooksinfo.com/louis-eustache-ude

Re: Early Modern Recipes (1600-1800) in a Modern Kitchen

#24

Post by sk5t »

kevinconroy wrote: post #11
kaji88 wrote: post #8

I am not much of a cook but everytime I cook, recipes never work. Sometimes, it seems like that if you follow the receipes measurements exactly, your food almost never tastes like what you expect. There always needs a bit of human discretion. As such, I find video recipes to be far more effective. You can see them cook and get a feel of what "cook meat until brown" really means, or what is a "sprinkle of green onion"

I've found that part of the problem is that there's a very bad user experience with recipe formats. They assume that one will get all ingredients out first and will only start to follow the instructions once everything is ready. Almost no one does that all of the time. The back and forth reading that you have to do results in errors because you lose your place, skip a step, add an ingredient in the wrong order, etc.…

I like your format very much, and it's close to how I usually transcribe recipes if transcription is necessary... poking around through the "wall of ingredients" of an unfamiliar recipe is extremely time-consuming and a great source of errors. Worst of all are the recipes that specify total quantity of an ingredient, but only in the detail advise to reserve some of it to be used in two different steps.

Re: Early Modern Recipes (1600-1800) in a Modern Kitchen

#25

Post by sk5t »

jghn wrote: post #19
jack-r-abbit wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your format is most certainly NOT for me. I am one of those people that do get all ingredients out first. I also get all my required measuring instruments out ahead of time. I also read the entire recipe so I can plan my steps. A normal recipe format is ideal for me. Your format is confusing to me. But everyone does things differently. I'm sure your format has an audience. Good luck.

In fact, it is much better to do what you describe. My cooking life became much easier once I learned to get a proper mise-en-place going. By the time I actually turn on a burner or anything like that, everything is fully prepped and ready to go in a pre-measured container.

How can you do a mise for, e.g., one-off home baking? In the case of familiar recipes I find it easier and cleaner to use a JIT process...

Re: Early Modern Recipes (1600-1800) in a Modern Kitchen

#27

Post by hobs »

jerf wrote: post #20
kaji88 wrote: post #8

I am not much of a cook but everytime I cook, recipes never work. Sometimes, it seems like that if you follow the receipes measurements exactly, your food almost never tastes like what you expect. There always needs a bit of human discretion. As such, I find video recipes to be far more effective. You can see them cook and get a feel of what "cook meat until brown" really means, or what is a "sprinkle of green onion"

"As such, I find video recipes to be far more effective." My path to learning to cook was to watch nearly the entire run of Good Eats, picking out recipes that seemed like fun, but more focusing on using the knowledge and skills to do my own thing. The host of Good Eats and I appear to have radically different tastes, so, ironically, whenever I've actually made one of Alton's recipes from the show that taught me how…

Agreed, he is teaching you the fundamentals, and how things interact on molecular levels on up and dissipates a lot of cargo culting, from a purely tv show perspective its a show that's worth watching.

Re: Early Modern Recipes (1600-1800) in a Modern Kitchen

#29

Post by dragonwriter »

kevinconroy wrote: post #11
kaji88 wrote: post #8

I am not much of a cook but everytime I cook, recipes never work. Sometimes, it seems like that if you follow the receipes measurements exactly, your food almost never tastes like what you expect. There always needs a bit of human discretion. As such, I find video recipes to be far more effective. You can see them cook and get a feel of what "cook meat until brown" really means, or what is a "sprinkle of green onion"

I've found that part of the problem is that there's a very bad user experience with recipe formats. They assume that one will get all ingredients out first and will only start to follow the instructions once everything is ready. Almost no one does that all of the time. The back and forth reading that you have to do results in errors because you lose your place, skip a step, add an ingredient in the wrong order, etc.…

There's a fairly well established alternate format (active format) for recipes that addresses the concern you identify, which is pretty similar to your format but with the action for each step ahead of the steps ingredients; is also fairly common for standard format recipes to break into seperate pieces based on where separating prep makes sense.

I'm think of you aren't breaking on natural prep separations but just on traditional recipe steps, then the action-first approach of the active format is superior (since awareness of the actions is essential to planning prep), but for people with less kitchen experience (or that want to spend less effort analyze the recipe before executing) the standard format--possibly with explicit prep separations--is the best way to go. Failing to prep before starting execution is a common source of failure, and while separating pero can work, doing prep one action at a time rarely works well.

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