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Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

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Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#201

Post by js2 »

dfxm12 wrote: post #126
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…

She's upset that the recipes are different If she's like my mother, she probably thinks of these recipes as a connection to her parents and grandparents. The importance is not in the finished dish, but in the history of this specific artifact, including: the hand writing, the original index cards, the references to the bowls she remembers as a little girl. I understand this. When I see my grandmother's recipes, hand-…

> When I see my grandmother's recipes, hand-written in broken English, it makes me smile, because I can't not read it in my grandmother's voice.

You might enjoy listening to this when you have 10 minutes:

"The Last Batch of Fudge" – by Michael Imber

https://themoth.org/stories/the-last-batch-of-fudge

The Moth's web site is really slow so here's another link to that story in the episode:

https://overcast.fm/+mknK1k/38:45

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#202

Post by dml2135 »

lifeformed wrote: post #198
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…

I bet you couldn't consistently make a cake even half as good as a box mix for even triple it's cost. People who don't bake often then baking is just throwing some stuff together and heating it up. It's very hard to get consistent results! It's literally an exact science. Did you weigh all the ingredients exactly? Did your mix and sift them evenly? Is your leavening agent fresh? Did you account for the humidity in yo…

Baking may not be easy but it’s not that hard.

If you bake from scratch, then maybe your results won’t be as good at first, but like anything else you will get better with experience and improve with time.

Like, would you suggest people only eat frozen TV dinners because the results will be more consistent than if they cooked a meal themselves?

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#203

Post by marticode »

lifeformed wrote: post #200

I feel like nobody in this thread has made a cake before and thinks it's trivial to do, and boxed mixes are just premeasured flour, baking soda, and sugar.

Basic cakes are fairly trivial. A pound cake (or butter cake) for ex is just egg, butter, flour and sugar in equal weights and a bit of baking powder.

The other issue the article's author doesn't discuss is that boxed mixes are usually country specific. What you find in the US is usually not available in 90% of the world, nevermind in the right box size.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#204

Post by tavavex »

I have no idea what they were thinking with that. Their product relied on it having attained the status of being a common unit. They have many recipes calling for 1 box of their product, it's the perfect way to have your customers promote your product or even to lock them into your brand, with the same consistent unit size coming with every variant of your cake mix.

But they just had to blow their whole leg off - who cares that down the line none of the recipes won't work and will result in inedible cakes? Look, we saved some cents by skimping on the raw ingredients! Why care about the long term when the next quarter is the only thing that we can see?

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#205

Post by encoderer »

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…

I tried my best to update several of my family recipes.

A common measure in many of them was “an egg” e.g. “an egg of butter, cold”.

This is meant to be an egg-sized quantity of butter, but what was a normal sized egg in 1905?

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#206

Post by cmbuck »

lifeformed wrote: post #188
bruce511 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Various gums, starches, dextrins, mono- and di-glycerides, surfactants, encapsulated flavors, specific leavening ratios, basically the whole chemistry set. Um. Ok. You say this like it's a good thing? I'll be honest, your statement makes me want that less rather than more. Now granted, I never use mixes anyway, so I'm not the target market. I mean, baking a cake or cookies from ingredients is so simple a 5 year ol…

Don't be so snobby about cake ingredients. There's nothing wrong with using processed food in a recipe. I garuntee a box mix will make a much better cake than "from scratch" unless you are very experienced. Cooking is not always about making the ultimate gourmet meal, it's about connection and tradition. Processed food is a normal part of every day people's lives and makes it's way into traditions. Grandma's secret r…

[flagged]

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#207

Post by dml2135 »

Spivak wrote: post #161
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You put in barely more labor to get a better final product, because cakes (and brownies, etc) made from boxed mixes never turn out as well as those from scratch.

The amount of people in the cooking enthusiast world that dismiss chemistry and assume it makes the end product worse is just a socially acceptable form of ludditeism. Meanwhile in the professional world Sysco does 80 billion dollars of business.

Is Sysco a name that you associate with good food? In my mind they mostly supply chain restaurants and prisons.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#208

Post by BenFranklin100 »

lifeformed wrote: post #188
bruce511 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Various gums, starches, dextrins, mono- and di-glycerides, surfactants, encapsulated flavors, specific leavening ratios, basically the whole chemistry set. Um. Ok. You say this like it's a good thing? I'll be honest, your statement makes me want that less rather than more. Now granted, I never use mixes anyway, so I'm not the target market. I mean, baking a cake or cookies from ingredients is so simple a 5 year ol…

Don't be so snobby about cake ingredients. There's nothing wrong with using processed food in a recipe. I garuntee a box mix will make a much better cake than "from scratch" unless you are very experienced. Cooking is not always about making the ultimate gourmet meal, it's about connection and tradition. Processed food is a normal part of every day people's lives and makes it's way into traditions. Grandma's secret r…

Oh, that’s just not true. Buy a cookbook or two. It’s not hard to bake a decent cake from ingredients unless you’re grossly incompetent in the kitchen.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#209

Post by ksenzee »

kragen wrote: post #178
ksenzee wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why on earth would I make pancakes from scratch when I can buy Krusteaz? If someone gets enjoyment from buying their flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, buttermilk, and oil separately, and turning pancakes into an entire weekend morning activity involving a sinkful of dirty dishes, then they should definitely do that. Meanwhile I’m dumping a cup of Krusteaz into a bowl, adding water, and eating pancakes within five minu…

Your alternatives are mixing the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt yourself or buying them premixed as Krusteaz, which doesn't contain buttermilk or oil. Neither of these involves more or less dirty dishes than the other. At a guess, the premixed stuff costs US$4/kg, while if you make it yourself, it's US$1/kg. You can mix up 5kg pretty easily in a few minutes, say 10 minutes, saving US$15, which is an hourly wage…

No, that’s incorrect. Krusteaz Complete Buttermilk Pancake Mix (which, at least where I live, ten miles from Krusteaz HQ, is the only “Krusteaz” anyone cares about) contains flour, sugar, dextrose, baking powder, salt, starch, soybean oil, and buttermilk. Unless I’m using enough of it to justify buying an entire canister of powdered buttermilk - which, by the way, is not cheap, and probably throws that $1/kg calculation off - I can’t mix it up in a shelf-stable way. And if I am using that much of it, I can get it in bulk for ~$2/kg.

Even if your math had been accurate, it’s breathtakingly condescending. If you live in a modern society, and you want to buy pancake mix (pancake mix! of all the inoffensive products!) you should get to buy the damn pancake mix.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#210

Post by pcl »

dfxm12 wrote: post #126
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…

She's upset that the recipes are different If she's like my mother, she probably thinks of these recipes as a connection to her parents and grandparents. The importance is not in the finished dish, but in the history of this specific artifact, including: the hand writing, the original index cards, the references to the bowls she remembers as a little girl. I understand this. When I see my grandmother's recipes, hand-…

I have a professional cookbook like this

Do tell -- what's it called? Sounds like a great read.

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