aem@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (a.e.mossberg) (02/02/91)
- Contents:
INTRODUCTION
HEADERS
RECIPE FORMATS
MEASUREMENTS
SUBMITTING AN ARTICLE
FOLLOW-UPS TO ARTICLES
ARTICLES FROM OTHER SOURCES
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ALT.GOURMAND
DIGEST VERSION OF THIS GROUP
INTRODUCTION
Hi, Welcome to the monthly posting for Rec.Food.Recipes. This posting
is designed to tell you a little about our newsgroup, and some
suggested guidelines. First off, let me say that this is a moderated
group. An utterly thankless job, but one which hopefully will keep a
high-quality level of posting here (what's called a high signal/noise
ratio on USENET).
This group is designed for the dissemination of recipes. It was created
early in 1990, when rec.food.cooking had more and more postings of both
recipes and non-recipes. It was ultimately decided that a separate
group for recipes was a *real good idea*, and a successful vote was
held. (Net historians: the final vote was 233 for, and 116 against. The
guidelines at the time specified that a successful vote was yes votes at
least 2x no votes, and at least 100 more yes votes than no votes.)
HEADERS
This group, while primarily for recipes, also allows requests for
recipes. I, as moderator, set up headers to reflect their content as
unambiguously as possible.
The Subject line consists of a uppercase keyword, followed by the
actual message title. For example,
Subject: PORK: Grecian Pork Chops
Keywords are picked to be self-explanatory. Here are some typical ones:
VEGAN PORK OVO BEEF OVO-LACTO
LAMB LACTO DRINK REQUEST CHICKEN
To head off the two or three questions I get every time this article is
posted, OVO means the the recipe contains eggs, but not meat or milk
products. LACTO means that it contains milk products but not eggs or
meat, and OVO-LACTO means that it contains eggs and milk products but
not meat. These are standard designators. Really.
If an article contains multiple recipes which would normally get
different keywords, I try to use the keyword which will get the largest
readership for that article. For instance, if an article contains two
OVO-LACTO recipes and one BEEF recipe, I will probably use OVO-LACTO
rather than BEEF. Ovo-lacto vegetarians can ignore the BEEF recipe,
but if I used the BEEF keyword they could miss the two OVO-LACTO
recipes. If no type of recipe is predominant, I'll usually use MISC as
the keyword.
RECIPE FORMATS
Recipes can be any format. If you're interested in the late
alt.gourmand and Brian Reid's USENET Cookbook Project, you may want to
try to use that format. Details later. The important thing is to make
your recipe clear. Don't depend on brand names being available
elsewhere in the world or even in the same country or region. If
you're using specialty ingredients, please give a brief description of
what they are. I won't reject a recipe because of its format.
Generally I won't reject anything sent to me. If it's not a recipe,
I'll redirect it into one of the other rec.food sub-groups, usually
rec.food.cooking.
MEASUREMENTS
Most, but not all, sites on USENET are located in the US. Hence most
measurements you'll see will be in the customary US system rather than
in the metric or UK systems. If you're out of the US, please remember
this when following the recipes. Below are conversion tables that were
provided by Fruitbat <fruitbat@tardis.cs.ed.ac.uk> and Caroline Knight
<cdfk@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
The measurements below provide simple conversions between UK measures
and US ones. The measurements given are approximate for convenience in
recipes, and care must be taken when making cakes or pastries, when
more accuracy may be needed. Conversions into cups are provided, and
some of the differences in language noted.
- Oven temperatures -------------------------------------------
(these are approximate)
Electric Gas mark Description
Fahrenheit Centigrade
225 F 110 C 1/4 Very cool
250 F 130 C 1/2
275 F 140 C 1 cool
300 F 150 C 2
325 F 160 C 3 very moderate
350 F 180 C 4 moderate
375 F 190 C 5
400 F 200 C 6 moderately hot
425 F 220 C 7 hot
450 F 230 C 8
475 F 240 C 9 very hot
- Food equivalences -------------------------------------------
British measure American equivalent
Flours:
flour - white plain/strong/ sifted flour - all-purpose/
self-raising/unbleached unbleached white
4-5 oz 1 cup
wholemeal/stoneground whole wheat
6oz 1 cup
cornflour cornstarch
4 1/2 - 5 oz 1 cup
yellow corn meal/polenta coarse corn meal/polenta
6 oz 1 cup
rye flour rye flour
6 oz 1 cup
Cereals:
pearl barley pearl barley
7 oz 1 cup
rice/bulgar wheat/millet/wheat rice/bulgar wheat/millet/wheat
berries
7 oz 1 cup
semolina/ground rice/tapioca semolina/ground rice/tapioca
6 oz 1 cup
fresh soft breadcrumbs/ fresh soft breadcrumbs/
cake crumbs cake crumbs
2 oz 1 cup
dried breadcrumbs dried breadcrumbs
4 oz 1 cup
porridge oats rolled oats
3 1/2 oz 1 cup
Sugars:
light/dark soft brown sugar light/dark brown sugar
8 oz 1 cup (firmly packed)
castor/granulated sugar granulated sugar
7 1/2 oz 1 cup
icing sugar sifted confectioners' sugar
4 1/2 oz 1 cup
Fats and cheeses:
butter, margarine, cooking butter, shortening, lard,
fat, lard, dripping drippings - solid or melted
1 oz 2 tablespoons
8 oz 1 cup
grated cheese - cheddar type grated cheese - cheddar type
4 oz 1 cup
1 lb 4 - 5 cups (packed)
Vegetables and fruit:
onion onion
1 small to med 1 cup chopped
shelled peas shelled peas
4 oz 3/4 cup
cooked sweet corn cooked sweet corn
4 oz 1 cup
celery celery
4 sticks 1 cup (chopped)
chopped tomatoes chopped tomatoes
7 oz 1 cup
button mushrooms button mushrooms
3-4 oz 1 cup
chopped pickled beetroot chopped pickled beetroot
2 oz 1/3 cup
black/redcurrants/bilberries black/redcurrants/bilberries
4 oz 1 cup
raspberries/strawberries raspberries/strawberries
5 oz 1 cup
Dried beans:
black/lentils/chick peas/pinto/ black/lentils/chick peas/pinto/
white white
3 1/2 oz 1/2 cup
Dried fruit and nuts, etc:
currants/sultanas/raisins/ currants/sultanas/raisins/
chopped candied peel chopped candied peel
5-6 oz 1 cup
2 oz(K - raisins) 1/3 cup
glace cherries candied cherries
8 oz 1 cup
sesame seeds sesame seeds
3 1/2 oz 3/4 cup
whole shelled almonds whole shelled almonds
5 oz 1 cup
ground almonds ground almonds
4 oz 1 cup
chopped nuts chopped nuts
2 oz(K) 1/3 to 1/2 cup
Nut butters:
peanut/almond/cashew etc peanut/almond/cashew etc
8 oz 1 cup
Preserves:
clear honey/golden syrup/ clear honey/golden syrup/
molasses/black treacle molasses/black treacle
12 oz 1 cup
maple/corn syrup maple/corn syrup
11 oz 1 cup
jam/marmalade/jelly jam/marmalade/jelly
5-6 oz 1/2 cup
Where necessary I have used the conversion of 1 kg = 2.2 lb
- American liquid measures ------------------------------------
1 pint 450 ml ( 16 fl oz)
1 cup 225 ml ( 8 fl oz)
1 tablespoon 16 ml (1/2 fl oz)
- British liquid measures -------------------------------------
I have got conflicting tables showing these:-
1 pint 570 ml ( 20 fl oz)
1 breakfast cup ( 10 fl oz) 1/2 pint
1 tea cup 1/3 pint
8 tablespoons 1/4 pint
BUT 8 * 15 * 4 = 480 ml which is short of a pint!
1 tablespoon 15 ml (RD)
1 desertspoon 10 ml (RD)
1 teaspoon 5 ml (RD) 1/3 tablespoon (S)
- British short cuts -----------------------------------------
Cheese (grated) 1 oz = 4 level tablespoons
Cocoa or chocolate powder 1 oz = 3 level tablespoons
Coconut (desicated) 1 oz = 4 level tablespoons
Flour (unsifted) 1 oz = 3 level tablespoons
Sugar (castor) 1 oz = 2 level tablespoons
(granulated) 1 oz = 2 level tablespoons
(icing) 1 oz = 2 1/2 level tablespoons
Syrup (golden) 1 oz = 1 level tablespoons
- Ounces to grammes -------------------------------------------
(1kg is about 2lb 3oz.)
Oz g Oz g Oz g Oz g
-------------------------------------------------------
1 25 | 6 175 | 11 300 | 16 450 (16oz = 1lb)
2 50 | 7 200 | 12 350 | 17 465
3 75 | 8 225 | 13 375 | 18 500
4 100 | 9 250 | 14 400 | 19 550
5 150 | 10 275 | 15 425 | 20 575
-------------------------------------------------------
SUBMITTING AN ARTICLE
Most news systems are set up to automatically forward any article
posted to rec.food.recipes to the recipes submission address
recipes@mthvax.cs.miami.edu Unfortunately, not all systems are
properly set up, and some will reject a message posted to the group,
give you an error message, or just toss the article away. If your news
system exhibits this "feature", you should first notify your system
administrator so they can do something about it. You can submit
articles directly to the submission address by mailing them to
recipes@mthvax.cs.miami.edu and bypass the local problem altogether.
People receiving the digest version of this group should also mail
their articles to that address.
FOLLOW-UPS TO ARTICLES
Follow-ups in rec.food.recipes are automatically set as appropriate.
Regular recipes have follow-up set to rec.food.cooking, vegetarian
(i.e. the OVO, VEGAN, etc. keywords) recipes are set to follow-up to
rec.food.veg, drink recipes to rec.food.drink, and recipe requests are
set to followup to rec.food.recipes itself.
ARTICLES FROM OTHER SOURCES
In general, individual recipes from copyrighted sources may be
submitted, provided they are credited to the original source, and
modified in some way. If a copyrighted source specifically restricts
publication of any recipes, please don't submit them.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ALT.GOURMAND
This group is not a renamed alt.gourmand, nor does it replace
alt.gourmand. The alt.gourmand newsgroup is an on again/off again
project of Brian Reid. Mostly off. It has had no postings since the
creation of this group.
The idea of alt.gourmand was this: You mailed your recipes to Brian.
He would sift through them, and laboriously convert them into a special
format (using a set of macros for troff called "recip") for The USENET
Cookbook_. The recipes which make up _The USENET Cookbook_ and the
software for manipulating and printing out the cookbook are archived on
gatekeeper.dec.com.
If you're interested in Brian's project, you may want to ftp the
software and recipes from gatekeeper.dec.com. If you submit your recipe
in the alt.gourmand format, I'll try to remember to cross-post it to
alt.gourmand so when Brian resumes his project it may be included in the
USENET Cookbook.
If you want to retrieve recipes or the alt.gourmand software from
gatekeeper.dec.com and don't know how, talk to your system
administrator. You may have to use the mail archive server
archive-server@gatekeeper.dec.com to get the files through e-mail.
DIGEST VERSION OF THIS GROUP
There is a digest mailing list of postings to this group. During the
initial discussion for this newsgroup, several European usenetters said
they couldn't get rec groups, so I have simple digesting software and
mail them out when the file has around 10000-15000 bytes in it.
If you'd like to get on the digest mailing list, send me a note at
aem@mthvax.cs.miami.edu and I'll be happy to add you to the mailing
list. The digest formerly tracked submissions to rec.food.recipes, but
now consists of articles as posted to rec.food.recipes.
Made it this far? Good. Back to our regularly scheduled articles.