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Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

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Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#361

Post by teekert »

Ok, this is weird right? '“It’s just so upsetting,” says Judith, whose cookie recipe was passed down by her mother.'

Why pass some boxed commercial mix through your family? Maybe I have too much Italian in me (I'm not Italian, just love their mindset when it comes to cooking) but that's like passing some cheap plastic kitchen utensil down the family, instead of your cast iron skillet.

Just learn to bake properly based on flour, milk, sugar and eggs. Even my 9 year old makes muffins this way.

I still don't understand why people buy "pancake mix" for example, pancakes are 250 gr flour, 500 ml of milk and 2 eggs. That's about 1/3rd the price of a mix.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#362

Post by mgiampapa »

al_borland wrote: post #116
e28eta wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I first learned of it reading the intro to American Cake, by Anne Byrn. It covers the history of cakes in America, through (updated) 125 recipes. The current recipe for pound cake calls for 6 large eggs, but the notes on ingredients in the book’s introduction said early recipes needed 12-16 (!!) eggs in order to get one pound of eggs. Side note: pound cake uses 1 lb each of eggs, flour, sugar, and butter

This is very interesting. I recently bought an older Better Homes and Gardens cookbook from 1953. I wanted one from before science took over the kitchen too much. I haven’t had a chance to cook anything from it yet, but now I’m questioning if I’ll have issues trying to cook with a 70+ year old cookbook, especially when it comes to baked goods. I’m not into cooking enough to have the patience to experiment and tune th…

My standard cookbook is a 1970s edition of the Joy of Cooking, right before fat became evil and was excised from cookbooks. Everything from how to break down a squirrel to a side of beef.

I have no issues cooking from it with modern ingredients because it doesn't fundamentally use things that aren't "base" ingredients or other recipes in it.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#363

Post by kortilla »

teekert wrote: post #361

Ok, this is weird right? '“It’s just so upsetting,” says Judith, whose cookie recipe was passed down by her mother.' Why pass some boxed commercial mix through your family? Maybe I have too much Italian in me (I'm not Italian, just love their mindset when it comes to cooking) but that's like passing some cheap plastic kitchen utensil down the family, instead of your cast iron skillet. Just learn to bake properly base…

Do you mill your own flour? Or do you just use some boxes commercial mix like a filthy commoner?

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#364

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

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…

> It’s so much easier to measure with a kitchen scale than it is to wonder “did I pack the X in too tight or too loose into this cup?”.

Here in the UK, I get irrationally annoyed by seeing recipes that use "U.S." measurements. A "cup" is mostly meaningless to me as I've got lots of different size cups and as you state, it's not a consistent way to measure most ingredients (I can understand it being used for liquids, but even so why not just use ml or weight). When it comes to measuring larger ingredients (e.g. apricots) then the dimensions of this platonic cup come into play and I have to start deriving the optimal (almost) sphere packing to figure out how many apricots to use.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#365

Post by kortilla »

smcl wrote: post #356

> Her cookie recipe — a box of Betty Crocker chocolate cake mix, two eggs, and > ⅓ cup neutral oil — no longer works now that the box is a full 5 ounces smaller > than its original 18.25-ounce size ... “It’s just so upsetting,” says Judith, > whose cookie recipe was passed down by her mother. Shrinkflation is irritating but I dunno if I'd be pushing the "old family recipe" angle if it's just adding two eggs and some…

Wait until you see the family recipes for limoncello.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#366

Post by waste_monk »

encoderer wrote: post #205
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?

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

This site [1] has some interesting info:

[1886] "The average weight of twenty eggs laid by fowls of different breeds is two and one-eighth pounds. The breeds that lay the largest eggs, average seven to a pound, are Black Spanish, Houdans, La Fleches, and Creve Coeures. Eggs of medium size and weight, averaging eight or nine to a pound, are laid by Leghorns, Cochins, Brahmins, Polands, Dorkings, Games, Sultans. Hamburgs lay about ten eggs to a pound. Thus there is a difference of three eggs in one pound weight. Hence it is claimed that in justice to the consumer eggs should be sold by weight." ---The Grocers' Hand-Book and Directory, Artemas Ward [Philadelphia Grocer Publishing:Philadelphia] 1886 (p. 67)

With similar figures given for 1911 as well. Which would suggest a normal egg in 1905 would be approximately 56g (1 pound/ 8 eggs = 0.125lb per egg).

[1] https://www.foodtimeline.org/foodeggs.html

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#367

Post by teekert »

kortilla wrote: post #363
teekert wrote: post #361

Ok, this is weird right? '“It’s just so upsetting,” says Judith, whose cookie recipe was passed down by her mother.' Why pass some boxed commercial mix through your family? Maybe I have too much Italian in me (I'm not Italian, just love their mindset when it comes to cooking) but that's like passing some cheap plastic kitchen utensil down the family, instead of your cast iron skillet. Just learn to bake properly base…

Do you mill your own flour? Or do you just use some boxes commercial mix like a filthy commoner?

I don't mill my flour of course, I do get it at a mill which does, because I bake a lot of bread and 5 kg bags are cheaper.

That said, if you take my pancake example, you literally replace the flour with more expensive pancake mix. Ok, fine, in some mizes there are dried eggs and milk protein or something, and you just need water. But you could even make pancakes with water instead of milk and they're fine.

With cookies it's similar, most baking is just different amounts of sugar, flour, eggs, butter, milk/water. Maybe some vanilla sugar here and there. It's really not that hard. Hey, and now you can start to experiment with banana and almond flour, and make it a bit less unhealthy/more nutritious. Or make pancakes with oats and banana, also nice and a lot more fiber. Treat yourself to a nice kitchen machine with the money you save and become much faster as well.

Learning some basic, proper cooking and baking should just be part of raising kids imo.

I know it sounds snobbish, but it's really not rocket science. Imo we are being scammed by all these companies selling products that are just as much effort, but more expensive and less healthy (usually more additives). They just prey on our lack of knowledge with their recipes on the packaging and their products conveniently put at eye-height, whereas basic stuff like flour is always at the lower shelves.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#368

Post by mgiampapa »

phil21 wrote: post #299
yAak wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Cake mixes almost always come ahead in blind taste tests. Very few bakers short of folks with a lot of volume are doing stuff from scratch. It may or may not be healthier, but the subjective taste preferences of the masses is pretty much settled fact at this point. Frosting is a different topic - totally agree there, but I haven't seen any blind taste tests on that one. The professional bakers around me who do a doze…

> The professional bakers around me who do a dozen cakes a day or whatnot are all pre-made mixes, maybe some small modifications to the mix, and from-scratch frostings. I'm not sure I could even find a local spot with cakes made from scratch - at least in the traditional sense. The spots making 200 cakes a day perhaps, but those are going to look a lot more like the mixes you buy from Sysco or whatnot.

95% of bakeries are using a box mix and a packet of jello pudding. That's the secret.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#369

Post by unwind »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #348
sniffers wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's in the box is unknown to most people. Unknowable, even. They are surprisingly complex mixes.

Don't they have ingredients lists or is that a very European thing?

Sure they do, but nobody seems to have posted it yet.

The exact box in the article (it had a link!) has the following ingredients listed:

Enriched Flour Bleached (wheat flour, niacin, iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), Sugar, Corn Syrup, Cocoa Processed with Alkali, Leavening (baking soda, monocalcium phosphate, sodium aluminum phosphate). Contains 2% or less of: Modified Corn Starch, Palm Oil, Corn Starch, Propylene Glycol Mono and Diesters, Monoglycerides, Salt, Dicalcium Phosphate, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Xanthan Gum, Cellulose Gum, Carob Powder, Artificial Flavor.

Now I've been interested in cooking for 30+ years, and do all of our home cooking and baking, and there's no way I would believe that I can substitute typical from-scratch/pantry ingredients and get the same result.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#370

Post by mongol »

Theodores wrote: post #307
lifeformed wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I am calling snobby is to look down on grandma's cooking because she used processed foods. Normal, everyday families around the world use processed foods in their cooking. In the US Midwest a tradition is to use a box cake mix as a base and add to it flavorful additions, like homemade jams, fruits, whipped cream, etc. If I went to someone's house and their grandma served to me, it would be extremely snobbish to…

I am loving this thread, and how cake is suddenly up there as a controversial, polarising topic. Respect for working in a bakery, just hope you haven't got too many burn scars on your forearms from doing long night shifts. I am in broad agreement with you and I appreciate the difficulties of making a consistent product, particularly when there are variables in temperature, seasonal availability of ingredients, lots o…

> The Fairtrade cocoa goes and the 'Rainforest Alliance' cocoa comes in, and you can guess the ethics of the latter are not to the standards of the former.

This part interests me. I have no idea what seals of approval are worthwhile or not. I just see that they are printed on the package and assume it counts for something. Is there some controversy relater to cocoa in this case?

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