Number syntax

Yes -- hence my reference to "english" and not English.

And "beakers" of coffee :-/

Yup. The "ingredient specific" issue applies, here, as well. E.g., you buy flour in 5 lb (typically) sacks. Yet, you use it in cups (for the most part; even my larger Rx's using "5 lbs" of flour could just as easily have been expressed in cups). How many cups in a pound? How many cups in a pound of *walnuts* (also sold by weight)? etc.

Yup. And people, when faced with "I need a bigger/smaller measurement unit" aren't likely to say, "gee, I need a unit that will be TENFOLD larger/smaller" (!).

E.g., a farmer picks a bushel of apples and customer balks ("That's one helluvalot of apples! How about you sell me *half* that?")

Cultural issues -- how things are packaged, etc. -- also dictate measurement units. I recall a friend visiting from France asking for my brownie recipe. A year (or so) later, when I next saw her, she complained that her brownies came out terrible! After some discussion (my brownie Rx is pretty idiot proof), we realized that my reference to "squares of chocolate" was far too ambiguous for international use :> (my rewrite of the Rx now says, "oz semi-sweet baker's chocolate") She had used an (embossed?) "square" from a chocolate (candy) bar :-/

Yup. The tedium is an excellent reason to make things easier!

No. Recipes almost always come in grams. But, as a convenience, measuring cups come with a "gram" scale for flour and sugar, in addition to the milliliter scale. This just saves pulling out your weighing scale.

Here's one of my favourite cake recipes, an older one, in the form I received it: Mix 3 eggs, 3/4 block of margarine, 350g sugar. Add 350g flour, one package of baking soda, 50g cocoa. Add one can of sour cream. Add a few spoonfuls of sparkling mineral water. Bake on a sheet for 15--20 minutes at about 200°. Add icing. Can you reproduce it?

Hints: a block of baking margarine is 250g in Germany. A package of baking soda is 10g (although you can easily buy packages containing 50g or more these days). A can of sour cream used to be 1/4l when the recipe was written. Nowadays, it is 200g (by chance, the recipe happens to work with 200g cans, too). And, of course, 200° are Celsius degrees.

My current copy of the recipe uses standard units everywhere. So, unless you have totally different forms of baking margarine, cocoa or sour cream in the States, it is now context-independant and reproducible.

Stefan

I.e., an implicit acknowledgement that measuring cups are more efficient than a scale... :>

First, *nothing* is measured by weight so all those measurements would require "work" to convert to volumes.

Here, eggs are graded by "size" -- recipes typically are expressed using "large" eggs.

Margarine is sold in tubs as well as "sticks" (1/4 lb ea). I suspect its easier to make if you have the margarine at room temperature (?) (eggs are almost always expected to be at room temperature)

A "package" of baking soda and a "can" of sour cream are obviously ambiguous -- as is a "spoonful" of mineral water (in addition to the measured tea- and table- spoons, we have different sized flatware spoons -- of uncontrolled dimensions).

No salt?

How are things mixed? Do you gently fold in the sour cream? Or, use an electric mixer without regard for "over mixing"?

What is it baked *in*? I.e., a cake pan? What dimensions? (you only mention baking it *on* a sheet... but, presumably, that is *in* some sort of pan?)

And, no Rx for the icing. E.g., the glaze I use on the "yellow cookies" is very different than an icing used on a cake (for example, I have some that use raw eggs in the frosting! Very rich but can easily land someone in the hospital if not prepared well)

There is no mention of how/where the "cake pan" is located in the oven.

There is nothing to tell the user how to determine when/if the cake is "done" (i.e., whether 15 minutes is enough, etc.) And, how sensitive the recipe is to "falling".

Presumably, you will cool the cake on a wire rack (how long) after baking. How long before you can remove it from its baking pan? How long before you can cut it? How many will it serve? How long will it last "uncovered"/refrigerated/frozen? How long do each of the stages in baking take (prep, baking, cleanup, etc.)? I have had to modify my recipes to also include how long it takes to *pack* things (for shipment). This often affects how long I must let something cool prior to packing.

Finally, I can't comment on whether the order the ingredients are combined is ideal or appropriate. E.g., I would typically mix all the dry ingredients ahead of time (so they aren't in the critical path). Then, cream sugar into margarine (I use butter everywhere). Mix in eggs. In your case, I would need to see what things look like in order to decide if the sour cream should go in early vs. late -- ditto for the mineral water (does this add anything other than moisture?)

My engineering background is really evident in the recipes that I write. I've learned that there is a lot of "art" that needs to be explicitly conveyed to the user. I learned this when I first started trying to reproduce my Mom's recipes (all the little things that she took for granted and never wrote down)

Maybe on your side of the pond recipes measure in grams. Here they measure flour in cups for cakes and such and tea/table spoons for small amounts like you would use in gravy.

No, and you can't either if you live in an area where the humidity changes much. Here in the eastern US, we have humidity of 100% (or more) in the summer and down to less than 20% in winter if you don't humidify. Flour and sugar pick up moisture very quickly so that my cup of flour or sugar can change weight significantly between the seasons. I used to be a chemist and it was very important to keep lids on your chemicals when not actually removing content to prevent moisture absorption, both for measurement issues (we did use weight there, but we needed three or more decimal places of accuracy) and to prevent degradation of the contents. In the kitchen I think the requirements are very different, but I would not be surprised to find a 10% weight difference with season.

Not sure what you mean by "forms". They sell most things by weight and often also include the volume measure as a convenience. But do you buy just enough flour to make a cake? I don't see where it matter much how they sell an item as long as you can tell if you are buying enough to make the recipe. BTW, you left off the temperature indication... I assume that is intended to be 200 C? Yes, here we still use F and your temp would be the high end of a moderate oven at

I find that recipes typically don't need especially careful measurements. I often measure by eye when using spices and find a lot of interesting variations that way.

:-p Rick

Glass is your friend. A recipe I make calls for *lots* of maraschino cherries (e.g., 4 lbs). Costco, some years back, sold them in *huge* glass jars. I suspect they are about half gallon in volume.

Being a big fan of glass, I saved every one that I purchased (rinsed out, label removed, etc.) and repurposed them for storage containers. Currently, I have eight of them holding popcorn (unpopped).

I've never understood how folks can keep four, sugar, etc. in "canister sets" (usually with loose fitting lids).

Note that humidity can also ruin leavening agents -- effectively making them inert. I.e., anything that you purchase in a plastic container should probably get moved to something foil lined or glass unless you use it quickly.

This is also true of "high proof" alcohol (whether medicinal or otherwise). Leave a bottle open and it absorbs atmospheric moisture.

One huge advantage of moving to the desert southwest was the ability (for the majority of the year) to leave things that are hygroscopic "out", unprotected, without any obvious effects. Try leaving a bowl of popcorn (or potato chips) out "back east" and you'll be sorely disappointed come next morning.

(it's also really weird to leave a glass of ice tea on a counter and NOT find it sitting in a puddle 5 minutes later)

I was wondering if margarine is really what we call margarine or a synonym for "butter". E.g., "shortening".

Also, cocoa can have a high degree of variability (quality and "purity").

Or "slow" oven. And, of course, what you bake *in* often affects the temperature that you bake *at* (e.g. cooler for glass).

I take the opposite approach. I carefully try to control everything so that I can reproduce a particular "success", later. E.g., the "sour cream cookies" that I made this year came out absolutely perfect! (I have been modifying the recipe for over 20 years before *finally* getting it right). One crucial aspect is the amount of lemon zest (how large are the lemons), the amount of lemon *juice* (which type of lemon -- definitely not the bottled crud they sell in stores) and how much to *reduce* it (else the extra moisture makes a big difference in batter stickiness).

A ten pound batch of "my cookies" then 20 pounds of bread will have me *finished* for this holiday season (though birthdays start up again just after the New Year :< ). This year will most likely find the bread recipe "perfected".

No. I consider it inefficient. How do you measure n*100g (or, if you insist, n*100 ml) flour? Pour something into the measuring cup, shake to flatten the cone, repeat. How do you measure n*100g flour with a weighing scale? Pour into the bowl until the scale displays what you want.

My point being: it's better to measure stuff in units that are invariant over time and space, such as grams (or if you insist, milliliters), not "cans", "blocks", "cups" or "spoons". At least for stuff where the actual ratios are important (the mineral water is not important in the recipe). As an added bonus, the SI system provides a convenient means to avoid mixed fractions because you can easily scale all units up or down and still have useful numbers (okay, technically, 3/4 block of margarine is 187 1/2 grams, but I generally do not care about that).

Here:

Sheet pan. If you have a bigger one than I do (35x40 cm, standard size here), scale up the recipe.

Default procedure: powdered sugar plus water.

Default procedure: middle rack, it's done when it's no longer adhesive to a wooden stick. Heck, this is an embedded newsgroup, not a baking 101 :-)

So, now I'm going to make metric christmas cookies.

Stefan

We would (assuming dry ingredients) *plunge* the measuring cup into the container of . In the process of drawing it out, we would drag a knife (think: straightedge) across the top of the measuring cup scraping all of the surplus material back into the container. Then, dump cup into mixing bowl, etc. and count: "1". Repeat as often as necessary *knowing* that you have *exactly* N "cupfuls" in mixing bowl (not 3% more or less).

As I mentioned elsewhere, some ingredients (notably baking powder) are stored in containers that deliberately facilitate this. E.g., the opening in the top of baking powder container is roughly a semicircle (instead of a "full round"). Keeping the "flat" side of that semicircle "at the top", as you draw your measuring spoon out of the container, you lift it against that straight edge and let it scrape the excess baking powder off of the spoon and back into the container.

In each case, a *measured* amount is obtained with *crude* actions (motor control) on your part. And, *quickly*. The toughest job is remembering to count! :>

If you cook/bake more than casually, you learn how to mimic this sort of performance in other containers as well.

For example, baking *soda* is often sold in a cardboard box (I'm guessing there's about a pound?). The opening in the box ("tear here") is located along one edge of the box. So, plunge measuring spoon into box WITH THAT SIDE/EDGE OF THE BOX "at top" and drag the spoon across that top/side surface as you withdraw it from the box.

The same holds true for cake mixes (for those folks who don't bake "from scratch"), pancake mix, etc.

The biggest time sink (measuring-wise) is measuring out flour (since it is the bulk of most Rx's). E.g., the biggest Rx I've made this season called for 10C of flour. I suspect it took me much less than a minute to measure that volume *accurately*. Plunge 1C measuring cup into flour container, tap with edge of knife (to ensure no trapped air -- flour is relatively light), drag knife across top of cup, dump into large measuring bowl, repeat. It really takes just a few seconds to do this if you bake more than occasionally.

Liquids are also easy -- but, instead of measuring "over" the ingredient container as you do with dry ingredients (so the "excess" falls back to its "source"), you pour into the measuring vessel over your mixing bowl (so any excess goes into the "mix").

With liquids, the problems are usually for *small* amounts (the opposite of dry ingredients). E.g., I use 1/4t (i.e., *1*ml) of anise oil (when I use it instead of "anise extract") to bake ~80 pizzelles. Getting such small amounts correct takes a bit of concentration (and a steady hand!).

Eggs, I have found, are the wildcard. And, as my recipes get more highly refined, the normal variation in eggs is often enough to upset a "perfect" recipe. :<

Here, a scale could be of value -- weigh the eggs and then scale the entire recipe based on the ratio of the actual eggs used to the "target" weight (assuming it is "nominally" correct). That would be impractical with "measuring cups/spoons" (E.g., "I need to scale the recipe by 1.047").

But, a scale *could* find use *within* our wacky system just by letting you pick/choose eggs that better fit the desired total "mass". E.g., I do this "by eye", now. Picking, for example, a "larger" egg to compensate for some other *smaller* egg that I have already selected. (this is something I can not express in written recipes as it is a "learned skill")

But our "spoons" *are* invariant! If you *had* a set, then you could make my Rx's exactly the same way that I do. (just like if *I* had a SCALE, *I* could make YOUR recipes the way YOU do)

Who decides if "187" is a "useful number"? Any moreso than "6 oz"? Or, "3/4C"?

Looks like similar packaging methods. Our "tubs" tend to be round (no idea why people would buy margarine in a round form). I only use margarine when making pizzelles (butter would burn and discolor at the temperatures used) so I can't comment on how else it is used...

In stick form, it is sold "4 sticks to the pound" (in one pound packages). Sticks are perhaps 1.25 x 1.25" cross sections. Butter and margarine "wrappers" are often adorned with tablespoon (8T = 1/4lb), quarter cup (half a stick) and third cup markings (a whole stick being 1/2C). Any knife (even a dull one) can be used to cut directly through the wrapper "on the dotted line".

Here, you note the pan's dimensions in the Rx. E.g., I bake primarily in a 9x13 pan (brownies, etc.). OTOH, I have been slowly scaling up my cheesecake recipe to use an ~11x14 pan (seems that there is never enough cheesecake and, rather than make "yet another", I'd prefer to just make a *larger* one!)

Some Rx's require special pans (e.g., spring-form pan, "bundt" pan, etc.). If you want folks to be able to reproduce the Rx, they need to know those things. :> (e.g., my coffee cake Rx wold have to be completely reformulated to bake in anything other than the "donut-shaped" pan that I use)

Actually, I've never heard of that! My simplest "glaze" is XXX sugar ("powdered sugar") and *milk*. But, even that requires consideration as to exact ratios (to control sweetness, thickness and drying time). E.g., my "yellow cookie" Rx likes a slightly *less* sweet "glaze". But, this requires much longer drying time. And, tends to stick when cookies are packed in plastic bags. So, when I ship them, I also coat the glazed cookies with a fine powdering of XXX (to finish absorbing external moisture and help reduce chances of adhesion in transit)

Most of the other "frostings" I use are butter and/or egg based.

Yes, I was just answering your "can you reproduce this" query :>

"Done" is the toughest part of baking (for everything other than cookies -- since you can always eat *A* cookie to make that decision... and no one is the wiser! OTOH, you can't eat a corner of a cheesecake to "test it" and not expect folks to notice the "missing portion"!)

I have but one more batch to bake -- though they won't be delivered until after the holiday. Tonight, I'll bake my bread and have a full 24 hours to spare before the holiday :-/