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Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

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Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#591

Post by amatecha »

eesmith wrote: post #353
amatecha wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In 1981, the Betty Crocker Supreme Fudge Brownie Mix included a 5.5 oz can of Hershey's syrup. In 1949 you could get a 5 oz can when you purchase 2 quarts of ice cream. https://archive.org/details/mansfield-news-journal-1949-08-1... It came in multiple sizes. 5 oz is probably the "small can" mentioned at https://archive.org/details/trinity-parish-of-newton-centre/... . There was also a 16 oz can, https://archive.org/…

wow haha, nice finds! that's awesome.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#592

Post by slumberlust »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #364
joshstrange wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

We are still on the imperial system as a whole. Even within the US people who bake know weight measurement is king.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#593

Post by BobaFloutist »

codingdave wrote: post #541
jaggederest wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Why would you try to imitate a boxed cake mix? They don't taste better than making a cake from scratch. It does take some practice baking to do so, but that is just an adulting skill like many others. Home baking doesn't need commercial chemistry. Commercial bakeries don't need to warn the kids not to jump in the house when the cake is baking. They are totally different scenarios.

You're on Hacker News. Why put an excess of effort into any nostalgic project? Why try to recapture Windows XP GUI or SNES graphics or try to hack together a classic car that was, by all measurements other than cool factor, inferior to a modern car?

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#594

Post by 0xffff2 »

indrora wrote: post #300
joshstrange wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

> 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 I've heard called pats.

Wat. Never in my life have I seen butter in the (mostly western) US sold in anything other than 1/4 lb sticks. There are long, skinny sticks and short, fat sticks, but they're always 1/4 lb. If you say a "pat" of butter, you're getting roughly a 1/2 Tbsp of butter from me. Definitely not half a stick!

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#595

Post by BobaFloutist »

aDyslecticCrow wrote: post #590
Tadpole9181 wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pound cake This isn't meant to reply to the rest of the comment, but as an American I don't think I've ever seen or eaten a pound cake mix? The recipe is the name... You either make it for $1 or you go to the grocery/bakery and grab the $2 pound cake sitting on the counter. Most mixes people buy (at least around here) are brownies, cookies, and spongecake.

I use poundcake as a synonym to spongecake. The ingredients and process are the same, with variations large enough between recipes to accommodate both. (Cupcake, chocolate cake, lemom cake, some apple cakes all use the same basic dough composition too) Poundcake vary greatly beyond a "pound". If anything, spongecake is more strictly defined, originally not using leveling agents, relying on the air bubbles introduced…

Ok we'll sponge cake is absolutely not an American invention.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#596

Post by 0xffff2 »

bob1029 wrote: post #395

Cooking in larger batches has been my solution to the current trends in grocery pricing. It also helps to smooth out variability in recipes. Small batches are impacted much more severely. For example, if a recipe calls for 1 egg, you get exactly one chance to use an egg that's reasonably sized relative to the other ingredients. If you scale this to a dozen eggs, you could simply forget 2 of them and the difference wo…

> I've scaled my chicken fried rice recipe to implicate 16 entire chickens.

Is this satire? Do you do your cooking in an industrial cafeteria kitchen? Do you have a family of 20 people?

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#597

Post by 0xffff2 »

sersi wrote: post #398
bob1029 wrote: post #395

Cooking in larger batches has been my solution to the current trends in grocery pricing. It also helps to smooth out variability in recipes. Small batches are impacted much more severely. For example, if a recipe calls for 1 egg, you get exactly one chance to use an egg that's reasonably sized relative to the other ingredients. If you scale this to a dozen eggs, you could simply forget 2 of them and the difference wo…

> 1 egg, you get exactly one chance to use an egg that's reasonably sized relative to the other ingredients. I've always had the habit of weighing the eggs I use and adjusting the rest of the recipe for baking. Some recipes also includes weight of eggs in grams for exactly that reason. (Tip for converting, if it's a European recipe assume 45g per egg), if it's US assume 60g per egg. > The cost savings has been incred…

> (Tip for converting, if it's a European recipe assume 45g per egg), if it's US assume 60g per egg.

How did you arrive at those numbers? I (an American) have always understood one "standard large egg" to be 50g.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#598

Post by 0xffff2 »

Pikamander2 wrote: post #551
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A story I heard: the boxes of cake mix initially didn’t require eggs. Apparently housewives at the time hated them, because it made them feel sort of worthless, so the recipe was re-engineered to require a minimal amount of fresh ingredients; then they were a huge hit. [edit] oh, this story is repeated in a Youtube vid someone else here posted: https://youtu.be/CZDFwqHkPec?feature=shared

I have a pet theory that frozen microwave dinner instructions work the same way. They always seem to turn out the same no matter how you cook them, yet the back of the box insists that you need to poke several holes in the plastic and stir it halfway through and let it cool for several minutes. I'm convinced that they only add those steps to make people feel less guilty about heating up premade meals.

You have a magical microwave that heats things evenly throughout then. Normal microwaves heat from the outside in so you have to do the stirring and letting sit to get an even temperature throughout.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#599

Post by t-3 »

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…

Professional kitchens doing environmentally-sensitive cooking are going to have climate controlled areas and tools that make that work. Your kitchen probably doesn't. Many recipes will have wildly varying demands for flour (among other things) based on humidity, ambient temperature, elevation, the water, and the flour being used. Volume estimates end up being more accurate to the process than precise weights.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#600

Post by aDyslecticCrow »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #595
aDyslecticCrow wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use poundcake as a synonym to spongecake. The ingredients and process are the same, with variations large enough between recipes to accommodate both. (Cupcake, chocolate cake, lemom cake, some apple cakes all use the same basic dough composition too) Poundcake vary greatly beyond a "pound". If anything, spongecake is more strictly defined, originally not using leveling agents, relying on the air bubbles introduced…

Ok we'll sponge cake is absolutely not an American invention.

Going by first use by the term, poundcake would be British by about 30 years prior to the influential book American cookery (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Cookery). But modern poundcake also relies on the american invention of "double acting baking powder".
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