Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

cubbyathome.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 721 posts

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#271

Post by Dylan16807 »

ajross wrote: post #217
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…

[flagged]

The recipes were objectively not making the same thing without the update.

To fix your scenario, the build system that is installing the wrong versions and blowing up is the nostalgic one. And yeah it has some optimizations but it also has a bunch of anti-optimizations at this point. The new one is annoyingly different to look at but it actually sets up the server correctly.

"Stay in your lane" is not the way to address any flaws in what the OP did.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#272

Post by al_borland »

analog31 wrote: post #253
ksenzee wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the time I’ve soured some milk (to take the place of the buttermilk in the mix) and measured out the oil, I’ve spent five minutes and used a pyrex measuring cup or two that I didn’t otherwise need. That’s apart from getting out the kitchen scale, dragging out the dry ingredient canisters, taking the time to weigh or measure everything… I just don’t get it. Why do I have people telling me I should dirty even one ex…

I'm not pushing back at all, especially since I made two pancakes from Krusteaz this morning. What I like about Krusteaz is scaling down to 2 small pancakes without thinking about the proportions. But when I'm on the ball, pancakes from scratch are really not much more trouble. My trick is that precise measurements don't matter. I eyeball all of the measurements into a big measuring cup, and it works just fine. From…

> From what I've read, precisely measured ingredients are a modern invention anyway.

I believe this is where the cup measurement came from. Baking is all about ratios, so you could take any (drinking) cup you happen to have and use it to measure your various ingredients, as the ratios will all work out by using the same cup.

I recently saw a very expensive chef’s spoon that was supposed to be a perfect teaspoon(?) and had various other features. It was sold out. Out of curiosity, I went into my drawer, pulled out my normal spoons I eat with and compared them to what my measuring spoons held. It was the same. I just use my normal spoons to measure now. Good enough. I can then use the spoon to eat with, depending on what it is.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#273

Post by dghlsakjg »

kemayo wrote: post #195
pests wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Link for the lazy: https://miamifruit.org/products/gros-michel-banana-box-order... $17 for a single fruit!

Lucille Bluth underestimated, it turns out! (Context for the unfamiliar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTswXAFA18Y )

She was dead on if you account for inflation.

$10 in 2003 when the show first aired is $17.61 using the CPI to calculate inflation.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#274

Post by apparent »

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…

My child baked a cake from scratch and it tasted better than a box of cake mix. It took much more time, but it was healthier and tastier than cake from mix. We still use brownie mix though, with adaptations, for making brownies and chocolate cookies.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#275

Post by Dylan16807 »

cogman10 wrote: post #234
tavavex wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That person listed a lot of completely different ingredients. Did you dismiss them all out of hand for a specific reason? Something tells me this is about that bias people have, the one where long chemical names are all bad, because they're chemicals, and the only good chemicals one may use is ones…

If you look up the purpose of the various ingredients you quickly find that they are simply filling roles that other more commonly used household ingredients can take with minimal to no impact on flavor. Dextrins, for example, are simply thickening agents. Corn starch/potato starch. glycerides are literally just fats and added because most fats can't be powdered. Butter works just as well and is in fact preferable. S…

Nothing in this comment suggests anything bad about them, just that you can do it a different way.

If that's the reason to dismiss them, that's a very shallow reason.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#276

Post by desi_ninja »

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…

Some day I will do a internet deep dive which generation of Americans shifted to premade mixed and stopped cooking things from scratch. Nothing wrong with that, just different especially in grandma generation.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#277

Post by dghlsakjg »

dml2135 wrote: post #199
crazygringo wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we use those ingredients constantly and regularly. You don't usually make a particular type of cookie every week or two. You might only make it once every six months. And your cake mix won't stay good exposed to oxygen for six months. It's not about being helpless, c'mon.

Well this is why it makes sense to bake from standard ingredients like flour that have many different uses, instead of a processed box that can only be used to make one thing.

Standard flour? Which standard?

There are a lot of different kinds of flour. At most well stocked grocers in North America you will find pastry flour, all purpose flour, bread flour, organic flour, self rising flour, etc. That’s just the white wheat flour that you could use to make a cake. Don’t forget that whole wheat and different varietals of wheat exist. If you make cake with bread flour it is going to be very different from one made with pastry flour. There is no such thing as “standard flour”. Hell, even the mill that you use to grind the wheat berry can drastically change the nature of your flour.

That’s the whole point of this article. That what you think of as a standard might not be a standard forever, or it might not be a standard at all.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#278

Post by jandrewrogers »

blahedo wrote: post #246
julianz wrote: post #236

This does seem like a very US-centric problem. None of the recipes I was brought up on base their quantities on third party packaging, and generally don't use premixed ingredients. It's very strange.

Neal Stephenson referred to the phenomenon as "recombinant cuisine" in Reamde and identified it as specifically Midwestern, although I think it is more broadly American. (But I am Midwestern, so maybe not :)

I lived all over the US when I was young. If I had to pick a part of the US that I most strongly identify with that kind of cuisine, it would be the Midwest, no contest. Other parts of the US used it to varying extents but in the Midwest it was a core part of the cuisine. They practically reveled in it.

Some of the casseroles constructed that way from those days were legit delicious but I haven’t seen or heard of them since the prior millennium. I’m not even sure if some of the prefab ingredients are still available. I’d eat some of those again in a heartbeat. You don’t see it on the coasts anymore but the tradition still seems to exist in flyover areas.

NB: I just googled some of these things and the recipes appear to exist online, I just don’t know where to buy some of the canned ingredients.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#279

Post by malfist »

schiffern wrote: post #243
lifeformed wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Don't be so snobby about cake ingredients. Surfactants/emulsifiers, from that list, have been connected to leaky gut ('emulsifying' protective mucus) which causes inflammation. This is hypothesized to be one of the mechanisms by which ultra-processed food causes a constellation of diseases. Be snobby about cake ingredients. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9331555/ https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com…

Leaky gut is a myth. It's used to scare people and sell things. If you don't believe me, feel free to read it's Wikipedia page.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#280

Post by acomjean »

desi_ninja wrote: post #276
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…

Some day I will do a internet deep dive which generation of Americans shifted to premade mixed and stopped cooking things from scratch. Nothing wrong with that, just different especially in grandma generation.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/something-eggstra/

Fwiw about the "adding egg" to the mix

Post reply on HN