Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes • Hacker News Board

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#471

Post by DoneWithAllThat » Mon, Sep 15, 2025, 11:25 AM UTC

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 :)

No, he didn’t. What he was referring to was combining finished products to create new dishes. Not using pre mix products.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#472

Post by Ray20 » Mon, Sep 15, 2025, 11:27 AM UTC

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…

If these people were so smart, they wouldn't be so poor.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#473

Post by fireflash38 » Mon, Sep 15, 2025, 11:27 AM UTC

traceroute66 wrote: post #445

qlm wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in the UK too and you can buy measuring cups here easily. It doesn’t mean “a mug from your cupboard”. It _is_ a volume measurement. I do agree it doesn’t make sense for things that aren’t fluid-like.

> It _is_ a volume measurement Yawn. Except there's no such thing as a "volume measurement": - The so-called "cups" will have different manufacturing processes, some will be a bit smaller, some will be bit larger. Plastic cups will warp and deform with time. - When measuring dry materials like flour, the amount in your "cup" depends on your usage. Are you weighing sifted flour or flour out of the bag ? Are you accide…

For casual bakers, exact precision using grams can help... Or it might not matter at all. You'd need to have everything else be as precise for it to matter. Are you weighing your eggs? Do you adjust based on the humidity of the air? Do you know all of the hot spots in your oven and is the thermometer accurate?

It's science, but ya gotta realize you arent baking a sphere in a vacuum ya know?

At least a gram is a gram is a gram everywhere in the world!

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#474

Post by torginus » Mon, Sep 15, 2025, 11:30 AM UTC

I don't know about the US but where I live, cake mixes contain substandard ingredients and are sold at a premium compared to making it with the right stuff.

And mixing something together like a brownie doesn't take more than 20 minutes from start until it's in the oven. It's not even a time saver.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#475

Post by ricardobeat » Mon, Sep 15, 2025, 11:32 AM UTC

> Her cookie recipe — a box of Betty Crocker chocolate cake mix, two eggs, and ⅓ cup neutral oil

> whose cookie recipe was passed down by her mother

Sorry grandma, but that is not a recipe. A cake mix is just flour, sugar and yeast, there is little reason to use it especially for a recurrent recipe.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#476

Post by imglorp » Mon, Sep 15, 2025, 11:32 AM UTC

blahedo wrote: post #239

blahedo wrote: post #237

Oh wow this article was written specifically for me! :) My mom has been known for decades for her brownies, which she openly tells people are box brownies—Betty Crocker specifically, in fact—but people still love them. She noticed, a long time ago now (ten years?), that the recipe on the new boxes had changed, but since she still had a few of the old boxes, did some measuring and experimenting (and calls to the compa…

This is a link to the last time I talked about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16534745 and to the particular comment in that subthread where I give the recipe itself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16540539 EDIT: actually, let me also just paste the recipe here: 3¾c. of brownie mix (again, Betty Crocker Original Supreme) 2 eggs ¼c. water ⅓c. vegetable oil and the included packet of Hershey's sy…

Ok so this is the cake pan thread.

They can shrink the amount of mix in a box but the hard limit of shrinking is the standard set of pans that everyone has. There are also bundt and springform pans in addition to the rectangulars. So if they shrink the amount in the box, as the original article mentions, they have to keep changing the recipe to increase the air and the rise so it still fits the same pans -- maybe badly. Or they just abandon the larger pans and don't offer instructions for them and it's up to the baker to buy multiple boxes and do the math?

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#477

Post by bluGill » Mon, Sep 15, 2025, 11:32 AM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #407

bluGill wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SNAP like implies some poverty. They are likely not representative. Though it is still shocking. i'm also shocked how many people I know who eat out often at fast food. I can make a better meal for less and it will be healthier as well. Even hight end resteraunts are obviously reheating the same industrial froozen meals.

> i'm also shocked how many people I know who eat out often at fast food. I can make a better meal for less and it will be healthier as well. A burger at McKing takes what, a minute to order, a minute to eat, and a minute to dispose of the wrapper paper. Making a burger on your own? At least an hour worth of time just to buy the ingredients, drive home and store them appropriately so they don't go bad (which assumes…

I that shopping trip is once a week- it isn't a big deal. I spend an hour a day cooking, which does add up though-

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#478

Post by wil421 » Mon, Sep 15, 2025, 11:36 AM UTC

rtaylorgarlock wrote: post #408

kortilla wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait until you see the family recipes for limoncello.

I cut the sugar in grandma's limoncello by 30% and still end up with rocket fuel syrup which my friends think will cause sleep problems and diabeetus

The yeast eats the sugar and turns it into alcohol. More sugar more alcohol, grandma’s version sounds good.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#479

Post by saalweachter » Mon, Sep 15, 2025, 11:36 AM UTC

waste_monk wrote: post #366

encoderer wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That "approximately" is too approximate.

2.125 lb / 20 is 1.7 oz, which is very different than 2 oz when it comes to eggs -- egg sizes (in the US) are by the quarter-ounce, the difference between the two is two egg sizes.

(Which is how the problem in the article was solved -- eggs are now sold by weight, indirectly, because egg sizes are determined by weight, and you now buy boxes of eggs of a specific size.)

So the average egg in 1886 in that article would be classed as "small" today.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#480

Post by wccrawford » Mon, Sep 15, 2025, 11:37 AM UTC

ricardobeat wrote: post #475

> Her cookie recipe — a box of Betty Crocker chocolate cake mix, two eggs, and ⅓ cup neutral oil > whose cookie recipe was passed down by her mother Sorry grandma, but that is not a recipe. A cake mix is just flour, sugar and yeast, there is little reason to use it especially for a recurrent recipe.

It's pretty hard. There are a ton of people who can make a cake from a box, but not "from scratch". It's a really precise, easy way to get the basics done. Doing it yourself means the ratio is never quite the same as last time, even if you try really hard. Especially if one of the ingredients is a lot smaller quantity than the others, making it really hard to measure accurately.

The answer is probably to make your own "box mix" by doing a 10x batch at once, mixing it all up really good, and then storing of them in the freezer until needed. But I've never tried that, so it might have problems that I don't foresee.

It's a lot easier to make from a box.