Scientists of Lemmy, how would you standardize or improve cooking recipes?
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I'm sick of having to look up what country an author is from to know which variant of teaspoon they're using or how big their lemons are compared to mine. It's amateur hour out there, I want those homely family recipes up to standard!
What are some good lessons from scientific documentation which should be encouraged in cooking recipes? What are some issues with recipes you've seen which have tripped you up?
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I'm sick of having to look up what country an author is from to know which variant of teaspoon they're using or how big their lemons are compared to mine. It's amateur hour out there, I want those homely family recipes up to standard!
What are some good lessons from scientific documentation which should be encouraged in cooking recipes? What are some issues with recipes you've seen which have tripped you up?
At some point, food blogs stopped being about food and became personal memoirs with a side of seasoning. It probably started innocently enough—people sharing family recipes, adding a little background, a photo or two. But then came the SEO optimization, the Google gods demanding 1,500 words per post, and suddenly, every recipe for scrambled eggs begins with a story about someone’s childhood summer in Tuscany and how their Nonna taught them the sacred art of cracking an egg with one hand.
Now it’s standard: you search “how to make pancakes” and end up reading about a foggy morning in 2003, a breakup, a golden retriever named Milo, and how cooking became therapy. You scroll and scroll, dodging ads, autoplaying videos, and a pop-up asking you to “join the culinary journey.” Somewhere, buried like treasure, is the actual recipe—five steps long, could’ve fit on a Post-it note.
And yes, this is exactly that. This is the bloated preamble you didn’t ask for. You came here for temperatures and timings, and instead, you got this paragraph complaining about the very thing it’s doing. You’re now part of the cycle—scrolling, sighing, wondering when we collectively decided that roasting vegetables required a narrative arc.
Anyway, here’s the recipe. Probably. Keep scrolling.
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I'm sick of having to look up what country an author is from to know which variant of teaspoon they're using or how big their lemons are compared to mine. It's amateur hour out there, I want those homely family recipes up to standard!
What are some good lessons from scientific documentation which should be encouraged in cooking recipes? What are some issues with recipes you've seen which have tripped you up?
So you're basically telling chefs to research and write out for you all the variables?
Baking is a science, cooking is an art.
Every recipe handed down through generations has notes, changes, etc....that's what makes it beautiful.
I am lucky to have my grandmother's cook book with 3x5 index cards hand written, with the date and whom the recipe is from....but I don't use lard in her Ginger Bread recipe from 1932.
There is no exact science you're looking for, the garlic grown here won't be the same as the garlic grown there, your experience won't be the same as someone who has cooked for years saying 'fuck it, throw that in there and let's see what happens'.
....lol, amateur hour
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I'm sick of having to look up what country an author is from to know which variant of teaspoon they're using or how big their lemons are compared to mine. It's amateur hour out there, I want those homely family recipes up to standard!
What are some good lessons from scientific documentation which should be encouraged in cooking recipes? What are some issues with recipes you've seen which have tripped you up?
This would only make sense, if all people were baking with the exact same ingredients, in the exact same environment, with the exact same equipment. You know, like in a factory.
For households and the like, it makes sense to have a bit of variation, until you find the way that makes it perfect for you.
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So you're basically telling chefs to research and write out for you all the variables?
Baking is a science, cooking is an art.
Every recipe handed down through generations has notes, changes, etc....that's what makes it beautiful.
I am lucky to have my grandmother's cook book with 3x5 index cards hand written, with the date and whom the recipe is from....but I don't use lard in her Ginger Bread recipe from 1932.
There is no exact science you're looking for, the garlic grown here won't be the same as the garlic grown there, your experience won't be the same as someone who has cooked for years saying 'fuck it, throw that in there and let's see what happens'.
....lol, amateur hour
(to be clear, I was saying 'amateur hour' tongue-in-cheek
I am lucky to have my grandmother’s cook book with 3x5 index cards hand written, with the date and whom the recipe is from…but I don’t use lard in her Ginger Bread recipe from 1932.
That's wonderful! All I got was a disintegrating notebook of delights. I do like deciphering it but not when I'm hungry!
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I'm sick of having to look up what country an author is from to know which variant of teaspoon they're using or how big their lemons are compared to mine. It's amateur hour out there, I want those homely family recipes up to standard!
What are some good lessons from scientific documentation which should be encouraged in cooking recipes? What are some issues with recipes you've seen which have tripped you up?
Not any kind of scientist, but an adventurous home cook
I'd really like the USDA/FDA/etc. (maybe not under the current administration) to publish sort of a food safety handbook full of tables and charts for stuff like canning, curing meats, cooking temps, etc. targeted to people like me.
I've recently been experimenting with curing meats, I've done bacon, Montreal style smoked meat, corned beef, Canadian bacon, and kielbasa.
And holy fuck, is it hard to find good, solid, well-sourced information about how to do that safely.
And I know that information is out there somewhere, because people aren't dropping dead left and right of listeria, botulism, nitrate poisoning, etc. because they ate some grocery store bacon.
I just want some official reference I can look at to tell me that for a given weight of meat, a dry cure should be between X and Y percent salt, and between A and B percent of Prague powder #1, and that it needs to cure for Z days per inch of thickness, and if it's a wet brine then it should be C gallons of water and...
When I go looking for that information either I find a bunch of people on BBQ forums who seem to be pulling numbers out of their ass, random recipe sites and cooking blogs that for all I know may be AI slop, or I find some USDA document written in legalese that will say something like 7lbs of sodium nitrite in a 100 gallon pickle solution for 100lbs of meat, which is far bigger than anything I'll ever work with, and also doesn't scale directly to the ingredients I have readily available because I'm not starting with pure sodium nitrite but Prague powder which is only 6.25% sodium nitrite.
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I'm sick of having to look up what country an author is from to know which variant of teaspoon they're using or how big their lemons are compared to mine. It's amateur hour out there, I want those homely family recipes up to standard!
What are some good lessons from scientific documentation which should be encouraged in cooking recipes? What are some issues with recipes you've seen which have tripped you up?
Autist and scientist here: you're thinking of baking. Baking is the science one, cooking is infuriating because all of those really vague and inaccurate instructions are in fact as precise and accurate as they need to be. Seasoning is done with the heart, you do have to stir or knead u ntil it "looks right", "a handful" is the right amount to add. The only way to find the "right" amounts is to cook over and over until you instinctively know what enough looks like.
Anyway the ingredient I really really hate is from Jamie Oliver's "working girl's" pasta, where he lists "2 big handfuls of really ripe tomatoes". I HAVE CANNED TOMATOES YOURE GETTING CANNED TOMATOES JAMIE, I DONT HAVE FUCKING TIME TO GO LOOKONG FOR REALKY RIPE TOMATOES
Also standard teaspoon is 5ml. Just use that and taste to see if it needs more.
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I'm sick of having to look up what country an author is from to know which variant of teaspoon they're using or how big their lemons are compared to mine. It's amateur hour out there, I want those homely family recipes up to standard!
What are some good lessons from scientific documentation which should be encouraged in cooking recipes? What are some issues with recipes you've seen which have tripped you up?
All solids should be listed by weight.
All liquids should be listed by volume.
SI units only. (Grams for solids, mL for liquids)
More graduated cylinders and volumetric flasks in the kitchen please.
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Autist and scientist here: you're thinking of baking. Baking is the science one, cooking is infuriating because all of those really vague and inaccurate instructions are in fact as precise and accurate as they need to be. Seasoning is done with the heart, you do have to stir or knead u ntil it "looks right", "a handful" is the right amount to add. The only way to find the "right" amounts is to cook over and over until you instinctively know what enough looks like.
Anyway the ingredient I really really hate is from Jamie Oliver's "working girl's" pasta, where he lists "2 big handfuls of really ripe tomatoes". I HAVE CANNED TOMATOES YOURE GETTING CANNED TOMATOES JAMIE, I DONT HAVE FUCKING TIME TO GO LOOKONG FOR REALKY RIPE TOMATOES
Also standard teaspoon is 5ml. Just use that and taste to see if it needs more.
This may be true for experienced cooks but beginners need more precise instructions that are not "Until it tastes good".
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All solids should be listed by weight.
All liquids should be listed by volume.
SI units only. (Grams for solids, mL for liquids)
More graduated cylinders and volumetric flasks in the kitchen please.
I thought SI Unit for volume is m3
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This may be true for experienced cooks but beginners need more precise instructions that are not "Until it tastes good".
Thinking back on being a beginner, my problem wasn't that instructions were imprecise, but more that I didn't interpret "to taste" as a real instruction. It means I should fucking taste my food as I go, when at the time I would just taste it at the end.
So many bad meals can be avoided by sampling them over time and adjusting. I should know, having made too many.
I would classify this as an example of cooking logic (my own phrase) that needs to be learned. A lot of good recipes will assume the cook understands fundamental concepts like this, but it's not necessarily the recipe's job to teach you. Same as how IKEA assembly instructions might seem cryptic at first, but really boil down to using 3-4 different techniques to screw wood panels together. I do think there's a general lack of awareness that cooking has a separate logic, and this means a lot of people never teach it to others.
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I thought SI Unit for volume is m3
same thing, one cubic centimeter is one ml
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At some point, food blogs stopped being about food and became personal memoirs with a side of seasoning. It probably started innocently enough—people sharing family recipes, adding a little background, a photo or two. But then came the SEO optimization, the Google gods demanding 1,500 words per post, and suddenly, every recipe for scrambled eggs begins with a story about someone’s childhood summer in Tuscany and how their Nonna taught them the sacred art of cracking an egg with one hand.
Now it’s standard: you search “how to make pancakes” and end up reading about a foggy morning in 2003, a breakup, a golden retriever named Milo, and how cooking became therapy. You scroll and scroll, dodging ads, autoplaying videos, and a pop-up asking you to “join the culinary journey.” Somewhere, buried like treasure, is the actual recipe—five steps long, could’ve fit on a Post-it note.
And yes, this is exactly that. This is the bloated preamble you didn’t ask for. You came here for temperatures and timings, and instead, you got this paragraph complaining about the very thing it’s doing. You’re now part of the cycle—scrolling, sighing, wondering when we collectively decided that roasting vegetables required a narrative arc.
Anyway, here’s the recipe. Probably. Keep scrolling.
you may like publicdomainrecipes.com, a no-bs recipe website (doesnt have a lot of stuff, but you need to start somewhere)
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same thing, one cubic centimeter is one ml
But 1L is not 1m³
Liters are non-SI
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This may be true for experienced cooks but beginners need more precise instructions that are not "Until it tastes good".
Yes, and I'm explaining that a significant part of being an experienced cook is just the understanding that cooking isn't precise. You do not need to work out what sized teaspoons the author was using, just get any of the teaspoons out of your drawer, fill it up, mix it in, and then taste to see if it seems ok. The final result will depend on factors you can't control for - the conditions ingredients were grown in, the age of spices when they were ground, the specific cultivar you're using - and the author doesn't have your personal tastes, so while they can tell you the ingredients to use they can't give you the precise amounts that you'll enjoy. To find that out you need to make the dish repeatedly with small adjustments until you hone in on your tastes.
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But 1L is not 1m³
Liters are non-SI
1L is 1dm³ (10cm³)
They aren't "official" SI units but they dont require funny conversions and i'd much rather see liters then teaspoons
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Autist and scientist here: you're thinking of baking. Baking is the science one, cooking is infuriating because all of those really vague and inaccurate instructions are in fact as precise and accurate as they need to be. Seasoning is done with the heart, you do have to stir or knead u ntil it "looks right", "a handful" is the right amount to add. The only way to find the "right" amounts is to cook over and over until you instinctively know what enough looks like.
Anyway the ingredient I really really hate is from Jamie Oliver's "working girl's" pasta, where he lists "2 big handfuls of really ripe tomatoes". I HAVE CANNED TOMATOES YOURE GETTING CANNED TOMATOES JAMIE, I DONT HAVE FUCKING TIME TO GO LOOKONG FOR REALKY RIPE TOMATOES
Also standard teaspoon is 5ml. Just use that and taste to see if it needs more.
That man fucks me right off. "Here's how you can feed your family for a fiver"
Proceeds to use an entire fucking spice rack that'll cost about 80 quid to get set up properly.
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Not any kind of scientist, but an adventurous home cook
I'd really like the USDA/FDA/etc. (maybe not under the current administration) to publish sort of a food safety handbook full of tables and charts for stuff like canning, curing meats, cooking temps, etc. targeted to people like me.
I've recently been experimenting with curing meats, I've done bacon, Montreal style smoked meat, corned beef, Canadian bacon, and kielbasa.
And holy fuck, is it hard to find good, solid, well-sourced information about how to do that safely.
And I know that information is out there somewhere, because people aren't dropping dead left and right of listeria, botulism, nitrate poisoning, etc. because they ate some grocery store bacon.
I just want some official reference I can look at to tell me that for a given weight of meat, a dry cure should be between X and Y percent salt, and between A and B percent of Prague powder #1, and that it needs to cure for Z days per inch of thickness, and if it's a wet brine then it should be C gallons of water and...
When I go looking for that information either I find a bunch of people on BBQ forums who seem to be pulling numbers out of their ass, random recipe sites and cooking blogs that for all I know may be AI slop, or I find some USDA document written in legalese that will say something like 7lbs of sodium nitrite in a 100 gallon pickle solution for 100lbs of meat, which is far bigger than anything I'll ever work with, and also doesn't scale directly to the ingredients I have readily available because I'm not starting with pure sodium nitrite but Prague powder which is only 6.25% sodium nitrite.
there are several of these from the usda!
https://nchfp.uga.edu/resources/category/usda-guide
they are really well made pdf's with a lot of good info on exactly what you're describing.
I make my own hot sauces and kraut.
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(to be clear, I was saying 'amateur hour' tongue-in-cheek
I am lucky to have my grandmother’s cook book with 3x5 index cards hand written, with the date and whom the recipe is from…but I don’t use lard in her Ginger Bread recipe from 1932.
That's wonderful! All I got was a disintegrating notebook of delights. I do like deciphering it but not when I'm hungry!
I get it!
Now to really boil your noodle I used to work with a lot of (French) chefs who when they wrote out recipes for magazines and such (pre internet) they DGAF if it was accurate or not... "if zey screw eet up, zey sink it is zere fault"
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I'm sick of having to look up what country an author is from to know which variant of teaspoon they're using or how big their lemons are compared to mine. It's amateur hour out there, I want those homely family recipes up to standard!
What are some good lessons from scientific documentation which should be encouraged in cooking recipes? What are some issues with recipes you've seen which have tripped you up?
Recipes should be written with the quantities in the procedure. So instead of reading
Mix flour, salt and sugar in a large mixing bowl
It should be
Mix flour (300g), salt (1/4 tsp), and sugar (20g) in a large mixing bowl
That way you don't need to read/refer to ingredient list, read/refer to ingredient list, etc
