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Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

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Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#321

Post by justsomehnguy »

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://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45245450

And don't forget to make a correction adjustment between your grandma generation and whatever text you would find.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#322

Post by Jolter »

forgotusername6 wrote: post #316
Jolter wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you breezed right over the concept of self-rising flour! That’s an American thing if I’m not misinformed - at least we don’t have it in my country. You want to bake something here,, you get all-purpose flour and baking powder or yeast, depending on what you’re trying to make. One flour in the cupboard instead of two means less waste and less space.

Self raising flour was invented by a British baker, Henry Jones, in an attempt to make better bread for sailors. We still have it in the UK and I never trust it, always adding baking powder anyway to cakes. We have plain flour for pastry and sauces and then bread flour (higher gluten) for bread. I always have three flours in my cupboard.

I keep four to six flours in my pantry, but none of them contain additives like baking powder. It’s so trivial to add the appropriate amount when it’s called for, I have trouble understanding why self-rising flour would be a popular product.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#323

Post by imtringued »

jaggederest wrote: post #163
charles_f wrote: post #119

What I hate most about shrinkflation is how shady it is. That recessed middle section in cookie boxes so that they give me one less cookie makes me feel like I'm being played for a fool, and I do not like that. With that said, if the grandma's secret receipe is industrial cake mix, I don't know how much of a secret receipe it is. Especially since these are usually mostly flour, some sort of yeast or another, and choc…

> feels like something pretty straight forward to fix. It is actually not. This is something I learned as a lad working in a bakery, professional bakers use all kinds of ingredients not readily available at home. Especially in e.g. boxed cake mix, it's actually a half dozen ingredients that are totally impractical to keep on hand. Various gums, starches, dextrins, mono- and di-glycerides, surfactants, encapsulated fl…

So you're telling me it takes one update to the recipe of the boxed mix and you can never reproduce your old recipes? Sounds like one should avoid using ready made mixes altogether.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#324

Post by SapporoChris »

malfist wrote: post #279
schiffern wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaky_gut_syndrome Thank you, I'd not read it was a myth before and had confused it with another condition 'worsening allergy symptoms due to the effects of alcohol'.

Sorry, I couldn't find a good link to describe the effect but did see numerous websites mentioning that alcohol can worsen allergy symptoms.

My allergist informed me that alcohol dilates the blood vessels allowing more allergens to pass thru. My anecdotal evidence is that I do seem to suffer from more food allergies when I drink alcohol. Foods that I have a mild allergy to become seem to be more problematic when I drink.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#325

Post by amatecha »

joshstrange wrote: post #148
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’ve also digitized some recipes and had to deal with “1 can” or “1 bar” without size included. Some things aren’t sold like that anymore or their size has fluctuated. In the example about it was for a candy bar pound cake and “1 can of Hershey’s syrup” isn’t a thing anymore that I can tell and even if it was, I had no clue the size. Same with “1 Hershey’s bar”, uhh, no clue what 1 standard bar was then. Thankfully m…

RE: finding what "1 can" or "1 bar" was, you may be able to scour archive.org for scans of old magazines and newspapers to see advertisements or product listings for the respective product? At least, that's one route I'd consider

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#326

Post by darkamaul »

I’ve never seen the appeal of using a pre-made mix for pastry. We already eat too much processed food in our daily lives, and pastry, something that should be a rare pleasure, is worth taking the time to make properly.

You don’t need all that chemistry and weird ingredients when good products are enough for even the most prestigious chefs.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#327

Post by SapporoChris »

yAak wrote: post #249
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…

Box cake mix almost never tastes better than scratch. Next you’ll tell me store-bought frosting tastes better?

Ability to cook is a spectrum. In order for your statement to be true, then the average cook must be 'almost always' better at producing cake than the average bake mix.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#328

Post by globular-toast »

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.

I've made loads and it is trivial. You literally just follow the recipe.

Bread is a lot more difficult due to kneeding and shaping which are skills that must be honed.

Cakes, on the other hand, are just mixing and pouring which any idiot can do. The only real variable is the flour so some recipes might work better in your region than others, but cakes are still much more forgiving than bread (flour is more than half of bread by weight, but often less than a third of a cake).

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#329

Post by ccppurcell »

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…

I'm glad it's not just anecdotal. I had an American colleague whose husband praised her amazing guacamole recipe. The recipe turned out to be a jar of guacamole and a jar of salsa mixed together. I may have forgotten the details but a jar of guacamole was certainly listed as an ingredient. I thought it was a joke!

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#330

Post by philistine »

tavavex wrote: post #320
indrora wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even regional differences in things. If you say "one bar of butter", "one stick of butter", and "one pat of butter", these can all refer to three different things or the same thing, depending on where you are located. East Coast and West Coast US butter are sold in different size blocks (though both are "8 tbsp") however sometimes you'll find 4tbsp sticks on the west coast that look like 1/2 an East Coast stick that…

Meanwhile, here in Canada I've never seen "sticks of butter", only the large bricks. They're the same size as American ones, and labeled as 454g, but I only recently found out that in some places in the US, they cut them in fours. Before that, the phrase didn't mean anything to me, and I thought it referred to throwing the whole brick in. The smaller 250g packages also exist, but they're rare. I can't guarantee that…

Typical Americana. Cutting up and packaging in extra foil what could simply be sold as a larger brick.

See also, milk bags.

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