Wrestling with Recipe Writing

[gfron1]

I would love to see too much info, but even with that there might be confusion. For example, at lunch I made a buttercream that called for "250g / 1 C. yolk". Well, I weighed out my yolk and hit my 1C. at 210. I checked my second scale and confirmed the weight. Allowing for slight yolk variance, I was still a couple yolks off somewhere. So then I had to just wing it and sure enough, while usable, it wasn't quite right.

[project]

With all of that, you might end up with a line that looks like: 

2 lbs | 908 g (5 cups | 1.25 L) red potatoes, peeled and grated (about 5 potatoes)

Horrors! The way you wrote it, sounds like weigh first and peel later. Then do not know the weight of the potatoes actually to be used, i.e., the peeled potatoes. Instead, should write "peeled and grated red potatoes" meaning to peel and grate first and weigh afterward or at least "peeled red potatoes, grated" meaning to peel first, weigh, and then grate so that, either way, know the weight of the potatoes actually to be used.

Also, using measuring cups to get a reasonably accurate estimate of the volume of potatoes, peeled or not, is nearly hopeless; even grated it's tough. By far the best thing is just to specify by weight. Otherwise just resort to Archimedes: Fill a pot with water. Remove 2 C. Add peeled potatoes until the pot is full again.

When I sent in the manuscript for my first book, I was told I had to replace all my weight measurements.  Everything had to be by volume or by the piece (ie:  2 potatoes).  The standard line is that homecooks do not have scales. 

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Absolutely brain-dead outrageous, a compulsion to be helplessly incompetent. These book editors are showing their solid attachment to fantasy, romantic English literature well before the 20th century.

Such positions have nothing at all to do with the people buying the books and have only to do with the editors who personally just hate any thought of measuring anything. Indeed, one of the most important reasons they went into book editing is that they wanted a life of 'letters', i.e., fantasy, fiction, drama, poetry, and just hated mathematics, physics, chemistry, engineering, and technology.

Since the weight of "one potato" commonly varies by a factor of more than 10, absolutely, positively just CANNOT get any reasonably accurate weight of potatoes just by counting potatoes. Similarly for carrots. For celery, usually the stalks on the outside of a bunch of celery are at least 10 times the weight of the stalks at the center of the bunch.

Even just in making a skillet full of hash browned potatoes, have to be reasonably accurate on the weights of the potatoes and onions and the volume of the oil.

Escoffier measured carefully about 100 years ago; the importance was clear enough then and much more clear now.

GREAT! We have book editors denying the importance of careful measurements while typing into computers based on processors with line widths of 90 nanometers, about 900 atoms, and sending their e-mail over optical fibers carrying 80 wavelengths of light with each wavelength carrying 10 billion bits per second.

No "scales"? Nonsense. If nothing else, people have postal scales, commonly used both for determining postage and for weighing foods in dieting. A set of postal scales can be enough for measuring a few ounces to a few pounds of onions, carrots, celery, potatoes, cheese, chicken, etc.

Food processors are assumed to be common enough; scales are much cheaper and much more useful and should also be assumed to be common.

Right, we have recipes 'tres chez chic' calling for really strange, obscure, rare ingredients from half way around the world, and assume that people can get those, but, 'Horrors', can't be expected to have some simple postal scales. Clearly it's not about customers not having scales; instead it's about book editors personally just hating any concept of measurements.

There's another big point: "I watched a famous cook, and he didn't measure anything. So, why should I? And why should a recipe have precise measurements?"

Well, the famous cook actually did measure, nearly everything. But cook for 16 hours a day for 20 years and cook some dish 20 times a day for two years, and then for that dish will be able to measure quite accurately just by eye. Won't need measuring cups or spoons, scales, timers, or thermometers.

But, in trying to communicate via a book to a reader 1000 miles away a year later, a reader to cook the dish for the first time, then accurate measurements of weights, volumes, times, and temperatures become just crucial.

The 20th century showed via astounding progress in mathematics, physical science, medical science, engineering, and technology the overwhelming importance of measurements, commonly quite accurate measurements, and the hopeless, often dangerous, incompetence of fantasy and guessing. It was one of the largest steps up in the ascent of man. Careful measurements are one of the top, center crown jewels of civilization. This far into the 21st century, there is no excuse for ignoring measurements.

"But I see famous chefs on TV never measuring anything?".

But those TV programs are under the control of writers, directors, and producers who have their careers tightly tied to creating vicarious escapist fantasy emotional experience entertainment (VEFEEE), in the case of TV cooking shows, from having the audience 'identify' with the famous chef and, thus, have a fantasy that they are the chef cooking great food effortlessly. The fantasy is believable enough until try to eat the resulting food at which time the deception and delusion and the waste in time, effort, ingredients, and money become obvious.

Sure, getting the English literature, fantasy fiction, romantic poetry, theater drama, 'to measure or not to measure; that is the question', publishing media community to move forward a few hundred years into the 20th century and understand weights, volumes, times, and temperatures is TOUGH, but this is just a special case of nearly all progress where we have to pursue large changes but do it with great care and at the beginning will have few others with us.

Yes,

Star light, star bright,

The first star I see tonight,

I wish I may, I wish I might,

Have the wish I wish tonight.

is really cute, and really sweet in the movie 'Samantha: An American Girl Adventure', but it doesn't even start to put a satellite into orbit, a satellite that can report weather data, warn of hurricanes and snow storms, provide global positioning signals, transmit data, etc. For such satellites, need some very high quality engineering where measurements are central and crucial.

This stuff about rejecting measurements is deliberately incapacitating incompetence, a rush to dysfunctional dependency, fantasy in pursuit of vulnerability, and this far into the 21st century, just dangerous. E.g., 'global warming': Yes, light a candle, and warm the Earth. Okay, but how much? Can we measure it? Is it significant? E.g., a recent long Thomas L. Friedman TV program on global warming never even once provided any data at all to show that anything humans are doing for global warming is more significant for the temperature of the Earth than lighting one candle. Further, the program never once indicated how many degrees F or C the Earth has warmed since 1950, since 1600, since year 1000, etc. Instead, using the importance of measurements, as we can see in 'Committee on Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years', National Research Council, ISBN 0-309-66264-8, 196 pages, National Academies Press, 2006, since 1950 the Earth has warmed less than 1 F and now is about the same temperature as it was 1000 years ago. Yes, since 1000 years ago we had 'the little ice age', and the Earth has been getting warmer since then. How much has been caused by humans? Tough to say. Maybe a lot, a little, or nearly none. We should know, not in terms of 'media emotional guilt' but in terms of careful measurements.

Clearly in 'global warming' the crucial issue is temperature, just temperature. So, in discussing global warming, just must discuss temperature, careful, well documented measurements of temperature. So, Friedman's presentation that avoided temperature was just creating fantasy nonsense as media entertainment to grab people by the gut.

Being wrong on global warming is from silly to dangerous.

The phobia of the literary-media community against measurements is dangerous.

Can't communicate clearly how to cook even hash brown potatoes without some reasonably accurate measurements. "One potato, two potato" will result in several trials of bad food until the cooks work out some reasonable measurements for themselves. Bummer.

E.g., in a dish I am working on now, with everything else given and fixed, I am finding that a weight of 16 ounces of chunks of green pepper pieces is good, but 24 ounces is too many; 12 ounces of mushrooms is good, but 18 ounces is too many. To know, I had to weigh and taste. Can't do this by counting whole green peppers or mushrooms and, instead, have to use weights.

E.g., I am working on how to make an omelet based on 2 T unsalted US butter, 6 US large eggs, and some salt. I've wanted to know how much salt to use. TV cooking shows have the cooks reaching (with their food covered fingers) into an open container of salt and throwing salt at the food. Ah, TV! Instead, I did the most recent omelet with a level 1 t of standard US table salt; from taste I conclude that the salt level is okay. In the previous trial, I used a level 1/2 t of such salt and from taste concluded that the omelet could use more salt. Next trial I will use 1 1/2 t of such salt. When I decide how much salt I really like, then I will put the result into my notes and just use that measurement from then on. Then I will measure salt and not shake, dribble, or throw it.

Media executives: Whenever I see salt shaken, dribbled, or thrown, potatoes, carrots, stalks of celery, or onions measured by volume or counted, etc., it's an instant channel click, a book thrown onto the logs for the winter fireplace, etc. You can sit there in your media conglomerate corner office in fantasy that you are providing attractive, enjoyable entertainment, but in fact you are instantly convincing me you are a totally brain-dead fool and pi**ing me off.

We can't expect that the publishing community, determined to roll back civilization to before Newton, will join us in the 21st century. Instead, in time they will just die off, and the people left will have and use measuring cups and spoons, scales, timers, and thermometers. Then we will move on to measuring BTUs per hour, thermal conductivity, pH, water content, sugar content, viscosity, spectral density, aromatic esters, Malliard reaction components, liquid chromatography fractions, etc.

Edited October 30, 2007 by project (log)

[jsmeeker]

question for all of the non-USA based members who use non-USA targeted cookbooks.

When COOKING (not baking), do you really get out your scale and weigh out x grams of, say, onion or garlic? Do you really need that level of precision? Saying "one small onion" or "2 cloves of garlic" is not good enough? Same for salt. Can't you just go with a rough estimated amount, then taste it?

I always thought that the goal for a lot of *cooks* was to *cook* without having to spend time meauring every little thing to very exact amounts. I mean, I like to bake. And I like to measure. But when I cook, I try hard not to measure everything out to such precision. It just slows me down. Plus, I feel NOT measuring makes you think a little more. Does it LOOK right? Does it TASTE right? Maybe the cook book authors used a different brand of spice. If you use their measures, you may get something different with the spices you have on hand.

Same goes for time. And temps. It's just not possible to say "Put the burner to the position marked 'Medium" and cook for 4 minutes on one side and 3 on the other" and have that work perfectly for every person every time.

[John DePaula]

Since this is somewhat germane to the discussion at hand, I thought I'd include this post.

A few days ago, I stumbled upon this recipe site Cooking for Engineers. The web site itself has a ghastly style-sense circa 1993, but what's interesting is how the recipes are presented.

Check out, completely random choice, Cream of Mushroom Soup. Scroll down to the middle of this long page (just after the pix of individual steps) and look at the way the recipe is presented. Very elegant and compact way to present ingredients along with how they're prepped and combined. Perhaps related in some small way to how K8 writes her own recipes, grouping ingredients and instruction together.

[helenjp]

I don't think there's much difference or disagreement on handling of countable items like onions or cloves of garlic - if only because the dishes they appear in probably aren't sensitive to a 10% difference in the amount of onion used.

For example, if a recipe for meatloaf stated "1 cup of chopped onion", we all know that the volume will change according to how finely the onion was chopped - so a volume measurement in this case tells me that the exact amount isn't critical.

However...a Japanese potato is much smaller than a potato in NZ, and the same is true for eggplants. Japanese onions, on the other hand, tend to be bigger than in NZ, and our apples are mammoth...some kind of volume or weight measurement would certainly help.

You mentioned non-US cooks and non-US cookbooks - I take it you meant cookbooks for food we were familiar with...but there's also the fact that English is a convenient language for cookbook writers from many cuisines. Indonesians sometimes call something the size of a shallot "onion", but that is a very different amount of onion compared to a US or a Japanese onion, and you would have to know about Indonesian food before you could get good results from a cookbook written in English that stated simply "1 onion".

I imagine (sorry!) that some American writers and publisher produce cookbooks with the same mindset that an Indonesian publisher producing a cookbook in Bahasa Indonesia has - but (some, not all) English cookbooks are used by people who have never seen an American kitchen. It depends on what you perceive your market or audience to be.

[jsmeeker]

yes. By US cookbook, I mean the ones that I have, which were all purchased in the USA at bookstores or USA based on-line retailers.

And yes, I think most all cookbooks sold in the books stores in the USA tend to be targeted to those living and cooking in the USA. I don't think I'd ever use a book targeted to Indonesian audiences. Or Japanese. Maybe French. Maybe British..

Is it possible to write a single cookbook that uses terms that are universal to everyone on the planet? I dunno. Seems be a daunting task. Should it be the goal of an author or publisher to try to do it? I say no, it's not.

The reason I made the distinction is that I get the impression that many feel the common style in American books is "bad" or "wrong" and that it's "better" or "right" for things to always be specified in exact amounts and that everone the world over whips out a scale to measure out 100 grams of onions. Everyone, that is, except Americans.

Edited October 31, 2007 by jsmeeker (log)

[helenjp]

A book targeted to Indonesians, Japanese, etc. would naturally not be written in English, but cookbooks written in English about any country's cooking are very likely to be read by people outside their home country.

That includes the US, but of course, how authors and publishers feel about that is a slightly different issue. I would search out baking books by Berenbaum rather than other authors because I know her books will have the information I need - and if I lived in New Zealand and ran a bookstore, it would be her books and not Mr Sticka Budda's books that I would import. However, whether authors and publishers pursue the market for imported books in other English-speaking or English-using countries or not is up to them.

No cookbook published in the US even targets everybody living in the US, so I don't think "everybody on the planet" is the most realistic comparison! .

[Pam R]

The reason  I made the distinction is that I get the impression that many feel the common style in American books is "bad" or "wrong" and that it's "better" or "right" for things to always be specified in exact amounts and that everone the world over whips out a scale to measure out 100 grams of onions.  Everyone, that is, except Americans.

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I'd guess that very few people whip out a scale when they're cooking.

Yes, it annoys me that a publisher says 'nobody has a scale', but the fact is that many people don't. Or if they do, they're not using them. Unless you're baking, where precision is important (or is it?), I'd guess a lot of people are happy with '2 small potatoes' or '1 cup of diced onion'.

That's why I like the idea of giving options. Have the recipe set up so that it gives weights, volumes and '2 cloves'. Or, have a chart somewhere in the book that lists what the average size of a small, medium, large potato weighs.

jsmeeker - I think you're right. I don't see how a recipe can be everything to everyone. But as I'm writing my recipes, I want to make it so that it appeals to as many people as possible.

[K8memphis]

Since this is somewhat germane to the discussion at hand, I thought I'd include this post.

A few days ago, I stumbled upon this recipe site Cooking for Engineers.  The web site itself has a ghastly style-sense circa 1993, but what's interesting is how the recipes are presented. 

Check out, completely random choice, Cream of Mushroom Soup.  Scroll down to the middle of this long page (just after the pix of individual steps) and look at the way the recipe is presented.  Very elegant and compact way to present ingredients along with how they're prepped and combined. Perhaps related in some small way to how K8 writes her own recipes, grouping ingredients and instruction together.

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I do absolutely love that style. However not being as agile as an engineer I keep my writing more horizontal

and a bit more sequential trailing down the page as opposed to across.

That kind of style is what I use to make a shopping list for when I am for example baking many things for

Christmas-time baking and I need butter and sugar and eggs and various & sundry ingredients for

lots of products. I list the ingredients across the top of the page, the name of the recipe down the left side

of the page. And draw lines hither & yon and put the quantities I need in the appropriate box and then

tally them up at the top. I just go through each recipe once and done. Write it all down on one happy concise sheet.

This avoids forgetting to buy stuff at the store. Even though the store is close by it destroys my rythm to have to

stop & drive over. I believe this is why God invented husbands.

So my main ingredients will be written first then the more random ingredients trailing out to the right.

So the flour & brown sugar should have been written before choco chips & cocoa. The totals are up at the top so

they are easy to see. Of course a real list would be many more ingredients and many more recipes.

That graph paper thing worked out great though. I usually get a ruler...tmi...

[jsmeeker]

jsmeeker - I think you're right.  I don't see how a recipe can be everything to everyone.  But as I'm writing my recipes, I want to make it so that it appeals to as many people as possible.

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Somewhere, there is a balance between too little detail and too much. What about in addition to meaurements in standard weight, standard volume and metric weight and volume, adding ways to approximate the measurement?

I see this with, ummm... Rachael Ray cookbooks. (yeah yeah). She'll give ways to approximate how much oil is "2 TBSPS" or how to estimate 1/4 cup of something. Useful? I think so. Precise? No. But really, do we to be so precise when measuring out oil into a pan to saute vegetables or meat? I don't think so. I always thought it was a little sillly to see the America's Test Kitchen folks very carefully measure out the oil for a saute.

Getting *too* specific and making the reader feel that they MUST use a very precise measure of oil, for example, could really be a hinderance to acceptance of the recipe or the book or maybe even cooking all together.

[helenjp]

"Teaching" approximation is something I've seen in Japanese cooking magazines (especially the ones which have an "education" slant) more than in recipe books. Examples: showing handfuls of certain ingredients - e.g. a small handful of these vegetables or a double handful of those vegetables, this much in a cup is 100g.

Also useful was a "pinch" feature - pinching between thumb and 1 finger vs. thumb and 2-3 fingers. If you check yourself once, you can get quite accurate results for ingredients where you want to be accurate in small amounts (baking soda) or where you want to stay within certain limits (salt). That strikes me as more useful and realistic than the Japanese baking recipes which solemenly tell you to add 2g of cinnamon (digital scales are that accurate, and Japanese recipes for toaster ovens are that small, but still...).

I guess the point of measuring oil for a saute is that you tend to be too generous if you just upend your friendly home oil-container over your pan! Aren't they just trying to remind you that you really only need a small amount?

[cbread]

Yes, sure, there are plenty of recipes that need little accuracy. But that doesn't excuse sloppy and inaccurate writing / editing for recipes where accuracy is important. A scale good down to 1 gram now costs less than $30 almost anywhere. There is just no upside to messing about with teaspoons or shovelfulls or whatever when you need 7 grams of yeast and 12 grams of salt.

Housewife measurements are slower, more work, less adjustable and less accurate. A lose, lose, lose, lose proposition. I hate trying to mess with taking a housewife measure recipe and working it up in grams. I don't want cookbooks that don't show metric weights.

Looking to: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=17226 - we should have some there are at least 161, 756 cookbooks owned just by some of our Egullet membership who have written in to answer the question of how many cookbooks they own. Doesn't a number like that suggest some clout in the publishing world?

[kitwilliams]

Looking to: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=17226 -  we should have some  there are at least 161, 756 cookbooks owned just by some of our Egullet membership who have written in to answer the question of how many cookbooks they own.  Doesn't a number like that suggest some clout in the publishing world?

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Here, here, cbread! And since I entered my "160, give or take" in February of 2003, I must've added another 25 cookbooks or so.

So "Hey Cookbook Publishing World!...Get A Clue!" And if anyone wants to hire me to convert recipes, give me a jingle. I would be so happy to do so!

[kitwilliams]

...so was at the library last week and saw Bill Yosses' and Melissa Clark's "The Perfect Finish". Thumbed through it, looked interesting, but best of all, MEASUREMENTS IN CUPS, OUNCES AND GRAMS - woo hoo! Checked it out. Pulled it out to try his yummy looking Feathery Jam-Filled Butter Cakes (wouldn't you want to try them too, with a name like that?): first ingredient listed as follows:

"2 cups cake flour (16 ounces/450 grams)"

Many of you who bake will immediately see the error, for those of you who don't, two cups of (sifted) cake flour weighs 8 ounces which is about 225 grams (and why don't they say "one pound" instead of "sixteen ounces"?). Other ingredients are off (perhaps the test kitchen's scale needed calibration?) such as 4 oz of butter is stated as 127g. Well, it's closer to 112g! His next recipe calls for 6 oz/171g of sugar, the next recipe 6 oz/175g sugar. If we can't be right, can we at least be consistent? :wink:

Can't even trust the former White House pastry chef!

[Mjx]

...so was at the library last week and saw Bill Yosses' and Melissa Clark's "The Perfect Finish". Thumbed through it, looked interesting, but best of all, MEASUREMENTS IN CUPS, OUNCES AND GRAMS - woo hoo! Checked it out. Pulled it out to try his yummy looking Feathery Jam-Filled Butter Cakes (wouldn't you want to try them too, with a name like that?): first ingredient listed as follows:

"2 cups cake flour (16 ounces/450 grams)"

Many of you who bake will immediately see the error, for those of you who don't, two cups of (sifted) cake flour weighs 8 ounces which is about 225 grams (and why don't they say "one pound" instead of "sixteen ounces"?). Other ingredients are off (perhaps the test kitchen's scale needed calibration?) such as 4 oz of butter is stated as 127g. Well, it's closer to 112g! His next recipe calls for 6 oz/171g of sugar, the next recipe 6 oz/175g sugar. If we can't be right, can we at least be consistent? :wink:

Can't even trust the former White House pastry chef!

One of the sets of measurements was probably an afterthought, might even have been added to the original MS by an editor.

[heidih]

Frank Bruni quoted Gabrielle Hamilton today and I thought it so succinctly and well said:

“I like recipes to be written the same way you would give driving directions to your house to people whom you really want to arrive.”

[AAQuesada]

My favorite recipe writer is David Lebovitz he writes so clearly. I think i'm a pretty good recipe writer but it's a lot of 'know your audience' In my case it's line cooks / prep cooks. So i know that i have to write in short clear sentences or the instructions will be ignored. Everything is weighed out including liquids, I find it's easier not to confuse people with mixed measurements & even though I could write recipes in Spanish I only write them in English (no i'm not being cruel) because many of my cooks only know the proper names for things in English so if i ask for Perfollo no one will know I'm asking for Chervil except for me. 

[heidih]

5 minutes ago, AAQuesada said:

My favorite recipe writer is David Lebovitz he writes so clearly.

And he admits his mis-steps. One of my favorites