dkatz@zaphod.UUCP (Dave Katz) (12/20/85)
One thing that has always interested me in cooking is the ritual acts that recipes give as a guide to greater success. A typical example wold be in a Chocolate Buttercream Icing recipe I saw recently which required that 3 oz of semi-sweet chocolate and 2 oz unsweetened chocolate be melted together in a double boiler "and stirred continuously for 1 minute or until well blended". In a simple recipe this might be reasonable, but within the context of the icing, the overall mixing time for the final product was about 7-10 minutes. I can see no reason to spend time stirring the chocolates together when they will be so well blended in the remaining steps. Another is I always sift the salt and flour and other dry ingredients together and have yet to find ANYTHING in the screen at the bottom of the sifter. What I'm interested in here are other people's suggestions for cooking rules/methods which they beleive are unnecessary ritual or superstition. For some of us, this might make cooking easier by removing unneeded work. For others, we might come to understand why we do certain things, or if food preparation methods have changed such that the methods are no longer needed. Towards Better Gluttony Dave Katz
reid@glacier.ARPA (Brian Reid) (12/25/85)
In article <386@zaphod.UUCP> dkatz@zaphod.UUCP (Dave Katz) writes: > I can see no reason to spend time stirring the chocolates together when > they will be so well blended in the remaining steps. > Another is I always sift the salt and flour and other dry > ingredients together and have yet to find ANYTHING in the screen at the > bottom of the sifter. Without seeing the details of your icing recipe I would be willing to bet you that the chocolate blending step is important. I am certain that the flour sifting is important (see below). Assuming that you have a sufficiently discriminating palate you can learn the answer for yourself by making the icing recipe both ways and seeing how the result differs. When making recipes that have oil, water, and dry ingredients, it is often important to mix things together before adding another class of ingredients, because the presence of, say, flour or water, will often prevent the sugars and oils in chocolate from blending uniformly. This will result in an icing that is differentially sweet--one bite will be overly sweet and the next will be bitter. In your baking, I can answer without seeing your recipe. Sifting is a vital step in most baking. The purpose of sifting is not to remove foreign objects, it is to blend, aerate, and give a uniform consistency. Blending salt and flour together before adding liquids gives a much more uniform distribution of the salt in the finished batter or dough, and sifting flour, even by itself, aerates the flour to a "standard" density so that you can measure the flour with a measuring cup instead of weighing it with a scale. Part of "learning to cook" involves learning why things should be done. Cookbooks in general are just hints and explanations for people who know how to cook. I learned how to cook in a high school Home Economics class, which in my enlightened school system was open to boys as well as girls (Ingham county, Michigan). There are a few books on the market that teach about cooking. For a heavy-duty scientific explanation, often more than you ever wanted to know, try @i[On food and cooking] by Harold McGee [Charles Scribner's sons, 1984]. For a nice technology-oriented cookbook by two retired Home Ec teachers, see @i[How Cooking Works] by Sylvia Rosenthal and Fran Shinagel, Macmillan 1981. -- Brian Reid decwrl!glacier!reid Stanford reid@SU-Glacier.ARPA
rt@cpsc53.UUCP (Ron Thompson) (12/26/85)
> One thing that has always interested me in cooking is the ritual > acts that recipes give as a guide to greater success. > > Another is I always sift the salt and flour and other dry > ingredients together and have yet to find ANYTHING in the screen at the > bottom of the sifter. > I always thought these steps were unnecessary so I tried it my way to see if it made any difference. For instance, with cookies, after the butter and sugars are mixed the recipes always say to first sift the dry ingredients and then add. Well I just add the soda, salt and flour in that order mixing each thoroughly before adding the next. I cannot tell that it makes any difference - if anything I think it mixes the ingredients better. Would like to hear if there really is any good reason to do it the traditional way. -- Ron Thompson AT&T Information Systems Customer Programming (404) 982-4217 Atlanta, Georgia Services Center ..{ihnp4,akgua}!cpsc53!rt (Opinions expressed are mine alone.)
stu16@whuxl.UUCP (SMITH) (12/27/85)
> > One thing that has always interested me in cooking is the ritual > acts that recipes give as a guide to greater success. > I never bother sifting flour, and my cakes ALWAYS come out just right. Nice and high, etc. Also, when I melt baking chocolate, I do it in the microwave oven - 30 seconds at a time on 50% power, stirring when done. I've made chocolate covered candies with this method - turtles, candied pineapple chunks, dried apricots, fondants etc. Never a problem. As a matter of fact, sometimes I melt the butter before beating in the sugar and eggs when making cakes. Doesn't seem to make any difference. And sometimes when in a really BIG hurry, I just dump ALL ingredients into the bowl and using the electric mixer, beat the hell out of the batter. Very little difference. -- whuxl!stu16 (mamawitch)
jeffw@midas.UUCP (Jeff Winslow) (01/03/86)
In article <386@zaphod.UUCP> dkatz@zaphod.UUCP (Dave Katz) writes: > > One thing that has always interested me in cooking is the ritual >acts that recipes give as a guide to greater success. > > [...] > What I'm interested in here are other people's suggestions for >cooking rules/methods which they beleive are unnecessary ritual or >superstition. For some of us, this might make cooking easier by >removing unneeded work. For others, we might come to understand why we >do certain things, or if food preparation methods have changed such that >the methods are no longer needed. My wife and I have made about 200-300 chocolate truffles each year for the last three years for Christmas presents. The first year we grated the chocolate before melting it, as called for in our recipe. While this provided a spectacular display of the effects of static electricity (especially with plastic bowls), it was so much work, even with a food processor, that we skipped the grating step the next year - and got just as good a result. The recipe also seemed to call for forming the truffles as soon as the mixture was sufficiently thickened. We found this year that leaving the bowl in the refrigerator overnight before forming seemed to make smoother truffles - probably some kind of diffusion going on. Unfortunately for the would-be lazy cook, the periodic stirring of the cooling mixture appears to be very necessary! Think I'll go eat one of the left-overs... Jeff Winslow