Rule number one:
Recipes are Guides.
Rule #2:
A recipe is not out to get you.
Rule #3:
If a recipe does not work for you it does not mean the recipe works for no one.
Rule #4:
If a recipe does not work for you it does not mean you should yell at its author.
Rule #5:
If a recipe does not work for you you do not have to give up on it.
Rule #6:
If a recipe does not work for you, you are allowed to give up on it and blame no one.
Sometimes no one is at fault.
Rule #7:
There is no such thing as One recipe for anything.
Rule #8:
See number one.
Rule #9:
Recipes are formulas attached to methods. As a couple they can be called one: a recipe, but a method on his own is not a recipe although the list of ingredients is.
Rule 10:
Recipes do not good food make. Neither excellent, delicious, perfect or otherwise comes from a recipe sitting on the page. YOU are part of the recipe. And if the you changes, so does the recipe.
The Eleventh Rule:
A recipe in one state, in one city, on one continent, at one specific altitude, does not, I repeat: does not necessarily work on another that is totally different.
{Ever notice how sex with one person is rarely the exact same thing with another person? Few things in this life are cookie-cut-outs, except cookie-cut-outs.}
Rule #11 1/2:
Your favourite recipe here might not be your favourite recipe there.
Sometimes regional recipes and methods are different for actual, not merely random reasons.
Recipes for the exact same thing there look different than for here.
Recipes change based on many a variable:
Class, climate, tradition, religion, animal husbandry practices, air quality, altitude, financial choices, wars, famines, economic downturns, thriftiness, shelf-life, humidity, farming practices, prejudices, flavour choices, snobbery, age, historical problems, etc.
One person's lobster is another person's catfish. One person's buckwheat flour is another person's millet. One person's jaggery is another person's high fructose corn syrup. One person's butter is another person's bear fat.
If you can step back and look at a recipe as a list, as a set of possibilities; if you can make a recipe more than once to get to know it better than just a mere set of black lines strung together on a shiny page in a heavy book, you can befriend a recipe.
If you can learn what role each ingredient plays in a recipe, then you can experiment and come up with a new recipe all on your own. And if you can do this, you can have hundreds of get-out-of-recipe-jail free cards!
Unlock its code.
Make it yours.
Here in London I am testing a lot of recipes for the same thing and comparing them side by side. I need to know WHY a recipe is not working, and there are a lot of {some of them new} variables!
What I do is this:
I line up all the recipes on the same page. I write each recipe so that each ingredient lines up. Like so:
butter 100g butter 164g butter 212g
sugar 135g sugar 108g sugar 200g
eggs 78g eggs 96g eggs 62g
I give each recipe a name: A B C or 1 2 3 etc.
Then each bowl is assigned a sticker with it's name and what will be inside. One label is A and it has Butter 100g.
If one bowl has more than one ingredient in it I spell them all out on the sticker/tape so that when I go to weigh my ingredients, I follow my own instructions.
And because I bake on parchment, I make a little map so I know which baked good belongs to which recipe.
Even before anything is mixed or baked, the learning begins. And then to watch each recipe, only slightly different, come together in the mixer and form a very different mass, that's the higher education part.
In baking we have a lot of choices. What kind of flour, butter, sugar, salt, oven, baking vessel, temperature and so on almost ad infinitum. When testing recipes we have to lock in certain certainties. I am mixing all the doughs on the same mixer in the same order and taking them to the same point of mixing. I weigh the batter in the baking vessel so each baked good is the same size and bakes evenly in the oven.
And then tomorrow, when I taste these 3 same things right next to each other I will see what I like about each of them, and begin to make small changes based on what I know each ingredient is doing in the recipe. Sugar adds moisture, colour, and of course sweetness. Fat is flavour and tenderness and shelf stability. Flour is a binder and decides the density or lightness of the crumb. Leaveners can stale a baked good fast or make it rise. Liquids are a whole other chapter.
I hear a lot of people who get angry or self righteous at recipes and their respective authors. few cookbook authors can afford to test their recipes and if their recipes were only tested by themselves and they are professionals then of course you as a home cook in your home kitchen are going to come up against some problems or at the least, questions.
But if you can take a recipe into your own hands, and really look at it before you buy the best butter, and spend all day bringing everything to room temp and clearing all surfaces for your next floury masterpiece, then I assure you that recipe will return the favor. Work with the recipe, do not let the recipe order you around.
I'll make you a deal, I tell you mine if you tell me yours...
These are the recipes I want to befriend and understand better in the next month:
Spekulaas, Cannelle, and ANZAC cookies/biscuits.
What will you take another shot at? What recipe will you re-conquer, befriend, or tape back together?
Thats interesting. It is odd how upset people get at other people for their recipes. Its also amazing when 500 people make the same thing how everyone gets such different results and loves and hates something.
Mmm, love anzac biscuits, cant wait to hear about that!!
Posted by: Jennywenny | 10 November 2008 at 10:39 PM
1-Kung pao chicken and mapo tofu...how they came so far off the tracks I have no idea. I guess I wasn't a good enough friend to the recipe. But they haven't seen the last of me!
2-my mother's carrot cake....ditto above. I knew I should have paid more attention when I was a kid!!
Thanks for another great essay. Your thoughtful commentary always makes me want to approach my cooking more...well...thoughtfully!
Posted by: wineguy | 11 November 2008 at 12:48 AM
Shuna, try this ANZAC recipe. Granted, this is the only recipe I've ever made them from, but I think they're fantastic, as does everyone I've ever served them to. The non-traditional citrus brightens them up wonderfully, and using whole wheat pastry flour adds depth and weight that I haven't been able to recreate with AP flour.
Le yum: from : Heidi Swanson at 101 cookbooks.
Posted by: foop | 11 November 2008 at 01:56 AM
Great post. And so, SO true!
Hope you having a nice time on this side of the Atlantic. :)
Posted by: Suzana | 11 November 2008 at 04:20 AM
Shuna, what a great post. For a wedding in Sept. we gave pots & pans to a good friend for a gift. Now she
wants me to give her some of my favorite recipes. So I'm making her a small cook book for Christmas. Could I use your post as an introduction?? It's such great advice and said with wisdom & humor, as usual.
Good luck in London.
Posted by: Lyn Lidsky | 11 November 2008 at 08:13 AM
Swedish Meringue Horns. Buttery, light, ethereal, one-bite little beauties -- but what a bitch to make! A yeasty pate brisee divided in 10 small balls, each rolled out individually into circles, covered in a meringue and pecans, divided into 8 triangles, rolled up like crescents (messy little suckers!). Once baked they are drizzled with a glaze and more pecans. All this 10 times! Takes forever and what a mess, but oh sooo worth it! A favorite Christmas cookie that I haven't made in years, but you've inspired me, Shuna! I just discovered your blog recently, and you are wonderful writer! I can only imagine how good your food must be...
Posted by: Juday | 11 November 2008 at 11:41 AM
Gingerbread. Last year was apple pie...this year is gingerbread.
Posted by: Aaron | 11 November 2008 at 12:36 PM
Spekulaas! That's Dutch! \o/
Would love to read about that.
Posted by: Jurie | 11 November 2008 at 01:24 PM
Excellent post. I love it when you give me something to think about.
And I'm very glad you're off the political posts. :-P
I did this recently with chili (spreadsheet and everything). The recipe still needs work, but I came up with a few things that do and don't work.
Posted by: John Jezl | 11 November 2008 at 04:48 PM
ANZAC biscuits is how we Aussies refer to them. Take them out of the oven slightly before you think they are cooked so they are a bit chewy, that's the best way to have them.
Once you start them you will find it hard to stop eating them.
Thank you Uncle Hunty, the ANZAK change has been made. Sorry about that. Posting at 3 am means mistakes... ~ Shuna
Posted by: Uncle Hunty | 11 November 2008 at 05:11 PM
What an awesome guide. I am printing this out for inspiration!
Posted by: Cakespy | 11 November 2008 at 05:53 PM
I am convinced...if I make a recipe of my mother's the exact same way she does, by her side, it will not turn out as delicious as hers. Why?
Because she made it...not me.
Great post. Keep up the good work.
Posted by: Ricky | 12 November 2008 at 02:48 AM
Thanks for writing these sort of food essays. I can certainly identify with them. My sister gets scared with I try to mess up a baking recipe, she says, "Isn't baking an exact science? You can't just go adding and removing stuff."
Early this year, I experimented trying to make a Flourless 'White' Chocolate Cake... I know it's impossible, but no one told me THAT! So, I had to learn the hard way - TWICE! Such a waste of good chocolate. I wanted to flavor it with raspberry. I'm still determined, but now I know it can't be done with the regular flourless chocolate cake method.
Posted by: kayenne | 12 November 2008 at 04:09 AM
Beans. All types, like lentils, peas, pigeon peas, garbanzos, etc. With rice(s): brown basmati, risotto, sushi.
Posted by: John (the Bad Yogi) | 12 November 2008 at 01:41 PM
Cool to hear your A/B/C methodology for testing the variables. I thought about this question of how many variables there are in a simple bran muffin and came up with 23,135,212,800,000 distinguishable recipes.
Posted by: Michael Natkin | 12 November 2008 at 04:42 PM
Fucking. Awesome. Post.
Posted by: Garrett | 12 November 2008 at 05:50 PM
This was brilliant. I used to be a recipe follower to the letter. When I finally let myself experiment according to my tastes is when I found great food and my own culinary voice.
And another thing, did you ever notice sex with the same person can be different too, depending on where you are in the world? hmmmmm. something to think about.
Posted by: Deborah Smith | 12 November 2008 at 06:29 PM
I love recipes. I hate recipes coz I am drowning in a million flourless cake recipes......I read them, write them down from every possible source, into books, pieces of paper and even hoarde them!
I have some handed down from my grandmother, my teachers, famous chefs...but I have learnt that it is more about the technique and the chemistry, that is why the same recipe morphs according to the hands that make them!
Posted by: Malini | 12 November 2008 at 10:28 PM
I worked in a kitchen once where I was "punished" for applying to a better restaurant by being sidelined to pastry. The pastry chef was fanatical about keeping her recipes -- for fairly foolproof and unimpressive things -- secret. The worst part is she only worked three days a week and had no clue as to the dynamics of service. If we ran out of something I'd have to call her cell and she'd walk me through it.
On the other hand, my current, ultra-talented, Beard Award-winning (savory) chef uses a written recipe for everything, even including the amount of salt in grams or as a percentage of the component. It makes no sense to me that more savory chefs do not do this. There are still a million possible end results and ways to screw up but it at least removes a few variables.
Posted by: N. Farias | 13 November 2008 at 01:21 AM
Great list! I am always amazed how many different results can come from the people using the same recipe. I also laugh when somebody has issue and quickly blames it on the recipe source. I think that is the way of the world though, rarely taking individual responsibility. That's why I love your blog, because you do!
Thank you Ms. Tartelette, This means a lot to me coming from someone as talented as you! Where have we gotten to as a society that all our ails are always someone else's fault? Not a good sign. Perhaps one day we will all be human again, together. ~ Shuna
Posted by: Tartelette | 13 November 2008 at 01:55 PM
I had a Greek friend whose mother wrote down of all her recipes for her children but would leave a key ingredient out so her children would never be able to make whatever it was as well as her. I've always thought it's one of the saddest stories I've ever heard b/c of course even if her children followed her recipe exactly with all ingredients listed it would never be like their mother's. Although I made kibbe with my grandfather several times it never quite tastes like his but I still think of him every time I make it.
The recipe I'll attempt to conquer yet once again is fatayer - Lebanese meat triangles in pita bread. I have the filling down pat but the bread around it is never like it should be (not too thick and seams stuck together) but I've been playing with bread more this year and I'm ready to remount a challenge.
I can't wait to see your results and thanks for a great post.
Posted by: lisalou2 | 13 November 2008 at 02:21 PM
I had a super easy fudge recipe that I used one year, I perfected it, wrote down the ratios, and haven't been able to find it for 4 years. I want to remember or find it.
The smallest change in the simple ANZAC recipe can make them chewy or super crisp(like nut brittle). My favorite recipe has walnuts, dried apricots and sunflower seeds in it. Sometimes half dipped in chocolate. It's far from traditional, but after making so many cookies for so many years, I needed to play w/ the flavors. And they are a welcome surprise at cookie exchanges.
Posted by: Stephanie | 15 November 2008 at 02:18 AM
Great advice. I hadn't thought to approach food recipes as I approach glaze (clay) recipes. My brain just popped. Thanks.
Posted by: naomi | 29 November 2008 at 06:03 PM
This is so true. I have been loving your writing!!!!
Posted by: Katie | 31 December 2008 at 10:14 AM