I like the story --I don't recall where I heard it or perhaps read it. Someone recounting the story of finding out their grandma's delicious marinara sauce was not made with tomatoes from the garden but rather plain old store bought canned tomatoes --but prepared just right.
The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’
11–20 of 166 posts
Re: The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’
#12My mother was famous for her Yams and Stuffing she made every Thanksgiving. Everyone always wanted to know. I finally asked her for the recipes and found out it was from a newspaper clipping. I laughed pretty good finding out.
Re: The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’
#13[deleted]
Re: The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’
#14My 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's more than that.
I have an amazing chocolate cake recipe--I'm SURE it's cribbed from some magazine, chocolate container, or something. I have stopped giving it out as people simply can't get it right.
There are three classes of failure:
The first class of failure is in not following directions. When it says "1/2 teaspoon", they mean it. Baking is like lab--small things often make big differences. "Helping" one of these people is frustrating--"Um, try actually following the recipe."
The second class of failure is that a lot of people don't have basic cooking skills. "My chocolate is weird"--yeah, water does that to melted chocolate. "I can't whip this meringue"--yeah, you can't get even a trace of yolk in that or it's not going to work.
The third class of failure is that people don't seem to pay attention and learn. Hmmm, that cake recipe doesn't seem to like humid days. Uh, oh, there aren't any bubbles in my batter--my baking soda/baking powder are probably bad. Sniff, sniff--that doesn't smell right--did you use margarine or butter to prepare that pan?
One of my favorite for this was reconstructing my grandmothers kalach recipe. It just never smelled right. Until I remembered that she used to have a container underneath the cabinet that she used for the recipe--as a kid that never meant anything. As an adult, I was like "Hmmmmm, I bet that was lard." Sure enough, that made it smell right.
Cooking requires paying attention, but baking, especially, is in the details.
Re: The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’
#15My 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.
I think a specific step is what makes my wifes whipped cream stand out. It can't be the ingredients.
Re: The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’
#16On 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…
Our chocolate chip cookies were like this. Toll House recipe, except: 1/2 white flour, 1/2 wheat flour; 1/2 butter, 1/2 shortening; double vanilla; extra chopped pecans. Although probably a big unmentioned determinant of quality is ensuring the cookies are consistently the right size relative to cooking time and temperature, which is difficult to describe; IIRC the bag just says "spoonfuls of dough".
Re: The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’
#17I 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: it's from a box, Betty Crocker, make sure you get the "Supreme" kind and don't overbake it. That's it.
But. But! A while ago, maybe 3-4 years at this point, my mom noticed that the brownie box had changed. She had a stockpile (being known for the brownies, you see) but tried the new box before exhausting the stockpile. And it was not the same. The new recipe had different amounts of every ingredient and it just did not come out right. At all. She called the company to complain and actually managed to escalate the call far enough to get someone to admit a dark truth: the recipe on their end for the mix hadn't changed, but for various reasons to do with what they wanted to put on the "Nutrition Facts", they had changed the instructions of how to prepare them and the amount of the mix that was in each box.
My mom, not leaving this to chance, did a little bit of kitchen science and verified that what came out of the old box (from the stockpile, following the recipe) was either identical or a very close match to what came out of the new box (but following the old recipe), albeit a little inconvenient as you now needed roughly 1.25 boxes' worth of mix to make one batch of brownies. But this was but a minor hurdle for the truly devoted; and it meant that we now had, wait for it, a bona fide secret family recipe. The easiest one ever, since it still involved just making brownies from a box. (And keeping a jar of "remainder brownie mix" for use in the next batch.)
The epilogue to the story is that although the good recipe had been stable for a really long time, we were evidently not the only ones to notice a problem with the new one, because the box recipe has changed on several occasions since then—each time, as far as we can tell, without changing the blend in the underlying mix (because if we follow our Secret Recipe it still turns out fine). Really, I'm just waiting for them to throw up their hands, give up, and return to the original recipe, which would sort of deprive my family of a good story, but everybody would get better brownies so it's a win overall. :)
Re: The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’
#18I like the story --I don't recall where I heard it or perhaps read it. Someone recounting the story of finding out their grandma's delicious marinara sauce was not made with tomatoes from the garden but rather plain old store bought canned tomatoes --but prepared just right.
A note for people using tinned tomatoes: buy the whole ones, not the diced ones, and dice them in the can yourself. Makes a large difference in flavour, the quality of the tomatoes they use for whole is better than for diced :)
Re: The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’
#19On 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…
Oddly enough, the toll house recipe was our secret family recipe. It was traded for a lifetime supply of chocolate (and the publicity of inventing a beloved staple).
How interesting. Any way to verify this tale?
Re: The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oddly enough, the toll house recipe was our secret family recipe. It was traded for a lifetime supply of chocolate (and the publicity of inventing a beloved staple).
How interesting. Any way to verify this tale?
Assuming poster is a relative of Ruth Graves Wakefield..his user profile seems to match this story.
"On March 20, 1939, Wakefield gave Nestlé the right to use her cookie recipe and the Toll House name. In a bargain that rivals Peter Minuit’s purchase of Manhattan, the price was a dollar—a dollar that Wakefield later said she never received (though she was reportedly given free chocolate for life and was also paid by Nestlé for work as a consultant)."
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/sweet-morsels...