Where’s the box for the story about how mother used to make this years ago and how the author made it for a such and such party and guests were asking for the recipe and …
I want to read the authors complete backstory and several holiday pictures and sales pitches on why I should buy their artisanal ingredients, scrolling until I nearly give up.
I feel like the recipe loses authenticity since there is no backstory about how their great uncle came up with the recipe after falling out of a guard tower during WWII.
“When I was eight my great uncle Pete introduced me to his Schweddy balls…”
I actually vibe coded a script that would jump your browser to the recipe for that exact purpose.
justtherecipe.com is pretty great for cutting out that crap, although not as efficient as the system in OP pic
Here’s an open source library for generating these from markdown https://mossblaser.github.io/recipe_grid/tutorial.html
Works for some recipes, but not all.
Also, more detailed instructions are needed. Mix for how long, till what consistency? Baking times and temps usually also say something like “… or until just brown”, or “…until crispy with dark edges.” Because, unlike machines with switches that do exactly the same thing each time, cooking has many variables that simple instructions don’t account for.
It’s best for recipes where you know the techniques already. These are reminders and not detailed tutorials.
Like my bread “recipe”, which I don’t even bother writing down anymore, is just: 1% gluten flour, 29% spelt, 70% AP, 85% water, 15% starter. Sit 90 minutes. 3% salt, 20-25% other. Stretch and fold every half hour until crackly. Split in two loaves, rise, bake at 500F w/steam tray 25 minutes, turn off oven 20 minutes.
There’s a lot of unwritten stuff there, but it fits on a card.
Yeah that’s a problem I’ve encountered with old recipes. Written by those who know the procedure they just need to write down the exact portions. My family’s got foods lost to time that we know the ingredients of but not the method.
The donuts my family makes for Hanukkah, the recipe card just says “add flour until sticky” and like. Thanks great grandmother. Worse though is “add a can of cherries” because guess what has changed over time? Size of that can. By several ounces.
Add an asterisk or number to reference a footnote for the steps that need more instruction. This would work really well for a lot of recipes.
Mix until creamed, mix until stiff peaks form, etc. Any of the “action” steps that require further instruction are going to really mess up this tidy format.
COOKING FOR ENGINEERS!!!
I learned how to cook from this site like 20 years ago! I still use that format on my home recipe cards sometimes, but now I’ve just gotten so used to it all recipes look like this on my head. Great format, taters guna tate.
The real site also includes a paragraph description, this is just a quick reference card that’s assuming you have already cooked the recipe a few times, not great for learning it the first time.
I don’t know, what’s a recipe without a popup video and six banners and a “jump to recipe” button that doesn’t work, as well as 99 pictures of spaghetti?
This recipe is missing something. Maybe throw in a backstory.
Eggs from gay chickens and vanilla from gender-fluid vanilla plants.
Vanilla orchids are not gender fluid at all, they are hermaphroditic. And eggs from happy hens just taste better.
The hallmark of recipe design imo was modernist cuisine and the following books on pizza and bread. A lot of the recipes were obnoxious and it’s written by a notorious ex Microsoft cto that turned into a patent troll to finance his cooking nerd bullshit (morally justifiable to pirate all of the obnoxiously expensive books) but props for their recipe format
Very clear, in order of addition, scaling percentages, and in the actual book clear instructions follow which is extremely helpful in the bread one especially
Either I cant calculate or the percentages don’t add up.
What is up with the two 100%?I had the same question and found the answer: https://modernistcuisine.com/mc/how-to-scale-a-recipe/
Would’ve probably been helpful to add that, whoops. But once you understand it it makes scaling a recipe much easier. This is less important for stuff like Mac and cheese tbf, but if you go to the bread or pizza book the ratios are much more important
I have Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and I believe its written in the same way…
okay it is a little different, because there is no % or weight measurements, but it is in order similar, with similar instruction style, printed 1970.
That recipe design reminds me I should learn LaTeX, but I am also lazy, so…
You should probably mix together the dry ingredients before folding them in. So the big blank square in the bottom middle should be “mix” but I guess that ruins the cascading aesthetic and makes it more cluttered, which would’ve also showed the weakness of this design
Also why would you fold in the dry ingredients, maybe this is just some “lorem ipsum” recipe but unless there’s a foam you’re trying to keep inflated you don’t really need to fold stuff in.
So the big blank square in the bottom middle should be “mix”
is see that as an improvement. that square was empty and unbalanced space before
showed the weakness of this design
i guess when you generate such a design per script, then you can replace some of the straight lines with flowing/wavy lines and get a nice design again. (i am thinking like a sankey diagram maybe? but there are probably other more compact variants possible)
Kind of reminds me of the output of qdirstat.
wait, is qdirstat like windirstat but for linux? If so, I’m downloading it as soon as I get home
Perhaps less relevant for you on Linux, but for any using Windows, WizTree is a hugely faster alternative to WinDirStat in case that’s a pain point.
Filelight is my go-to
Yes. I don’t know if it’s still maintained, but I got my install through AUR and it works
Sequoia view developed at my alma mater. This was cutting edge technology when I was there almost 25 years ago lol
Flattening out nested trees can be tricky.
My dyslexic brain hates this. Words and lists are better.
It’s a neat diagram, but I’m unsure what they mean by “ignore it.” This is exactly how good recipes have been designed for many many decades, minus the nifty visual cheat sheet and with better instructions. [i.e. Do you beat the eggs? How thoroughly? How do you know when it’s done baking?]
I absolutely get that this might help those who are more visually based learners, but the structure of recipes already follows this pattern. This turns the written instructions into a simplified chart, and I hope more thorough written instructions are simply being elided here.
I do like it though. It would certainly make a nice visual shorthand to glance over at during prep.
I think the diagram is especially useful for those who have done a recipe numerous times.
This seems like a great visual summary and useful for those who can refer to it and use experience to fill in the details.
Nothing substitutes a raw cooking instruction in plain language.
I first saw this notation technique on a recipe card pinned to a stove from the 1850s at a preserved historical village display. I have no reason to doubt that it was the original card, or descended from it.
While they were at it, they could’ve solved the problem with “pre-”.
“There are only two states an oven can possibly exist in: heated or unheated!” - Carlin
What does that mean? What does fold in mean?
You just fold in the cheese, David.
You fold it in. I don’t think I can be more clear.
Oh good… now I see bubbles.
David! What does burning smell like?
Means lift some of the mixture with your spoon, turn it over and press it in again. It’s a technique for mixing without squeezing the air out, so it will rise in the oven.
Not sure if joking or not.
When you have a fragile mixture, like whipped eggs, if you mix like standard you will squeeze most of the air out
When you fold, you make a vertical circle, from the bottom and flopping on top, in a what that doesn’t so much ‘beat’ but fluffs.
It’s a scene from Schitt’s Creek.
Didn’t know that, really needa watch it
It’s the best!
I didn’t know the meme and this genuinely educated me so thank you
Absolutely love this way of setting it up! but it’s only almost perfect. It has weight in mass instead of volume and temperature converted to celsius. I only need a proper measure of the pan and it would let me make it without any conversions.
What am I even making here?
