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Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

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Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#711

Post by eichin »

al_borland wrote: post #133
inferiorhuman wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, cake flour?

From what I remember it’s more about the industrial emulsifiers. They give a more sponge-like cake they people tend to enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpF5B_jHZrw (Adam Ragusea, "How to give brownies a smooth, glossy top") which is where I remembered this from turns out to have been primarily about the appearance of the top - as part of his series of "change two dozen variables one at a time to quantify them properly" baking series (the chocolate chip cookie one is one of the other classics of the form.) (Though I may have it confused with one his other videos since he spends more time on dissolving sugar than boxed mixes here...)

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#712

Post by [deleted] »

closewith wrote: post #636
FearNotDaniel wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree strongly that this abhorrent and preventable tragedy should be categorised as genocide. The rich, protestant English looked down on the catholic Irish peasants as an inferior race, they blamed the Irish for their own suffering, supposedly due to fecklessness, stupidity, laziness etc, and they were happy to sit back and allow the poor farmers to starve. But that’s not the same thing at all as actively wishi…

The Irish Famine was genocide. The potato blight destroyed one crop, but the British state chose to export grain and livestock under armed guard while over a million starved. That is deliberate destruction of a people, not an accident. This pattern runs deep: Cromwell’s massacres and forced transplantation, the plantation system, the suppression of Irish language and culture, and the burning-out of Catholic families…

[deleted]

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#713

Post by kortilla »

smcl wrote: post #426
kortilla wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait until you see the family recipes for limoncello.

Honestly I don't mind if people don't make everything themselves as there's always going to be a line where you go "well I'm not doing that " (you're probably not milling your own flour, growing your own wheat, milking your own cows, raising your own chickens etc...). I just think they've tried to reach a bit far for a human interest angle - it's already annoying that customers are getting shafted, that's important!…

But they did disappear. Your disdain for unskilled cooking doesn’t offset the fact that it still became a family tradition.

The entire point of the article is that these aren’t just corporate trash products. They stick around long enough and they get woven into the culture.

Imagine if the recipe for spam changed and destroyed a bunch of Hawaiian dishes. I suspect you wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the importance it has in their communities.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#714

Post by smcl »

kortilla wrote: post #713
smcl wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I don't mind if people don't make everything themselves as there's always going to be a line where you go "well I'm not doing that " (you're probably not milling your own flour, growing your own wheat, milking your own cows, raising your own chickens etc...). I just think they've tried to reach a bit far for a human interest angle - it's already annoying that customers are getting shafted, that's important!…

But they did disappear. Your disdain for unskilled cooking doesn’t offset the fact that it still became a family tradition. The entire point of the article is that these aren’t just corporate trash products. They stick around long enough and they get woven into the culture. Imagine if the recipe for spam changed and destroyed a bunch of Hawaiian dishes. I suspect you wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the importance it…

If they started selling Spam in smaller cans and there was an article complaining that it has destroyed a dish my response would be roughly the same: the company are shitty for doing shrinkflation, and the recipe isn't destroyed the person needs to adjust the quantities.

Let's not make this into something it isn't, please.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#715

Post by antonyh »

account42 wrote: post #706
antonyh wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have salted butter for the table, and unsalted for baking. We don't bake often enough to want unopened packs if we can avoid it.

Pre-salted butter is another weird American thing that's completely unnecessary. Butter is also great for cooking and you can keep it for months in the fridge without issues.

It's about 50/50 here in the UK. Not at all weird, it's butter for different purposes.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#716

Post by Stratoscope »

perihelions wrote: post #698
Stratoscope wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you see this reply, may I ask a favor? The very first thing I learned to cook as a young kid in the late 1950s was a macaroni and cheese recipe from the BH&G cookbook. It was very different frum the creamy mac and cheese recipes that are common today. It didn't have a runny sauce; it had more of a firm custardy texture. You could scoop up chunks of it with a big serving spoon. I did some brainstorming with ChatGPT…

By chance, someone posted the text on Reddit two years ago, https://old.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/comments/ydmncf/searchi... ( "From Better homes and gardens cookbook 1953" ) The one in this very specific 1953 cookbook is not an egg-based custard, but uses as a thickening agent condensed mushroom soup, from a can.

Very interesting, thanks! That one is very different from what my little sister and I made as kids. Ours was more like the one from ChatGPT that I posted above.

We were big fans of cream of mushroom soup, though. Our favorite was to mix a can of that and a can of tomato soup (with the usual 50/50 dilution with water). We called it "cream of tomato".

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#717

Post by ricardobeat »

malfist wrote: post #631
ricardobeat wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Leaky gut" might be a myth, but emulsifiers' impact on gut health is not. A steady stream of studies [1] and publications on this [2] has been coming out, since the role of our microbiome became more clear. [1] ex https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-024-06224-3 [2] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jun/29/the-tru...

Lots of things are emulsifiers, are you saying eggs and butter are bad for the gut?

Emulsifiers in this context are carrageenan, guar gum, polysorbate, soy lethicin, xantham gum etc.

The linked article explains it quite clearly, it’s a good read.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#718

Post by wscott »

dfxm12 wrote: post #126
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…

She's upset that the recipes are different If she's like my mother, she probably thinks of these recipes as a connection to her parents and grandparents. The importance is not in the finished dish, but in the history of this specific artifact, including: the hand writing, the original index cards, the references to the bowls she remembers as a little girl. I understand this. When I see my grandmother's recipes, hand-…

Indeed. When I entered "grandma's cookies" into the shared family instance is 'mealie' I was sure to include a copy of the "original" index card. (surely a copy) https://imgur.com/KMSuUhz

That card was has several fun comments and lots of history to my siblings who added to the crustiness of this card.

The original card I remember said to use lard or you can use margarine if you "haven't slaughtered a hog recently".

The recipe in mealie was modernized and tested more.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#719

Post by [deleted] »

ksenzee wrote: post #209
kragen wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No, that’s incorrect. Krusteaz Complete Buttermilk Pancake Mix (which, at least where I live, ten miles from Krusteaz HQ, is the only “Krusteaz” anyone cares about) contains flour, sugar, dextrose, baking powder, salt, starch, soybean oil, and buttermilk. Unless I’m using enough of it to justify buying an entire canister of powdered buttermilk - which, by the way, is not cheap, and probably throws that $1/kg calculat…

[deleted]

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#720

Post by declan_roberts »

ksenzee wrote: post #120
declan_roberts wrote: post #87

When I actually started cooking I was shocked at how simple a lot of these box ingredients actually are. They somehow tricked a whole generation into buying "pancake mix" which is just flour, sugar, baking soda and salt!

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…

My only response to this is that you're doing it very wrong.
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