Good ol' recipes

[Mezzaluna]

I read an article today which mentioned that cooks in the "old days" might jot down a list of ingredients, mention a particular cooking vessel or pan, and only roughly note proportions. This makes it difficult for those of us who want to reproduce recipes from ancestors or mentors, because we have a tough time duplicating those old dishes.

Do you have recipes like this? They could be family recipes or dishes you have prepared professionally. Maybe you found recipes like this in heirloom or antique cookbooks.

For example, my grandmother baked bread nearly every day of her life while her husband and children were at home. She never measured anything with a standard measure. My mom watched her bake many times, but when it came time to pass the recipe on to me, Mom had no idea how much of each ingredient was actually being used. Mom had my grandmother make three batches of bread while she measured each ingredient before my grandmother added it. (This caused quite a few flashes of annoyance, I can assure you!) Finally, the three versions were averaged, and I can now make my grandmother's challah with good results.

Do any of you have similar experience?

[Leethequeen]

I inherited my grandmother's recipe box - many of the recipes say "add enough butter (or flour)". I would phone my mother to ask her how much to add her response would be "until it is the right consistency"....I spend a lot of time in the library and on line trying to find similar recipes with amounts of ingredients and then do the trial and error routine. Frustrating but also rewarding when it finally comes out the way I remember it.

[miahoyhoy]

Ya,

My Grandmothers books are the same.
butter
sugar
flour
baking powder
butermilk
baking powder
etc.

I have a blast making some of them!

I have been working on breaking my habit of doing the same thing. I'll make a soup, sauce, dessert, whatever and only write down ingredients. Then someone asks me how to do it and all I can give is ingredients.

Makes it hard to write a cook book that's for sure!

Jon

[Pete]

Just pulled out my copy of "The Home Cook Book" circa 1877. Most of the recipes either do not have: 1. amounts for the ingredients, 2. techniques, or 3. times and temps for cooking. It can be quite an undertaking trying to prepare a recipe from this and a few other books from the same time period.

[Someday]

Lol maybe they were on to something....almost every time I make a recipe I end up having to change it in some way anyhow. Maybe it's just as simple as adding a bit more salt, or whatever, but still. Especially baking when you can do the same recipe on different days and they come out different.

Plus, they probably never had to write anything down as, like you guys pointed out, they did it pretty much all day, every day.


~Someday~

[Athenaeus]

Yeap!

You know Mezz, modern scholars have concluded that the book of Apicius just lists the ingredients because he addresses professional cooks that suppose to know the analogies

I think that the same stands for the recipe book of our grandmothers!

Interestingly, in Greece, grandmothers don't leave just their recipe-book but also, the vessels or other kitchen equipment they used to measure ingredients

I have my grandma's cup that she was using to measure ingredients. Without the specific cup her recipes wouldn't make much sense.

I keep telling myself that I must convert those recipes because if this cup ever breaks I will have a problem but then...

[Mezzaluna]

Athenaeus, the article mentioned a similar issue. Long ago in small towns, the women would buy baking pans, cups, etc. from the same small store so they all knew the size of "a big cake pan" or "a teacup of flour". When people dispersed or the towns grew larger, the meanings of such descriptions were lost. Even "butter the size of an egg" is pretty subjective!

I, too, am one to cook by eye, nose and ear. (Yes, I do listen for the sound of a hot enough sizzle in a pan or a too-fast boil in a pot.) I have a great deal of trouble sharing recipes because I don't measure. Since I'm not much of a baker, I respect the chemistry of that art and stick closely to recipes. But for savory cooking, it's all sensory!

[markface]

i also learned to cook by watching my gamma and mother , and to a certain extent my father . up until i started cooking profesionally i seldom used measuring utinsils except when baking . its only been in the last few months when i bring in samples of some of my home cooking and my boss wants recipe's that i realized that its hard to convert small pile of this medium pile of that into actual measurements . now anytime i cook something that i havent already converted , i properly measure things after i hand measure them . many of the recipe's passed down from my gamma have never been put to paper . i had to just be there enough times when she cooked them to get it right myself .

[coolJ]

And then there's the Escoffier cook book, which for the most part is a list of ingredients.

[tigerwoman]

just an aside but if you do have a friend or relative that cooks by eye, one way to figure out what they use (and remember it may vary in baking cause of weather or time or year)

Do an accurate weight measurement of all the ingredients before they start. Then weigh again when finished.

You may have to do the recipe several times and average, but weight is generally more acurate than measurement and you don't have to interupt them each time they add an ingredient.

Also try to video tape them doing the recipe by setting up the video camera on a tripod. Don't worry about exact focus, but being able to watch their techniques and listen to the commentary will help you when you try to reproduce the results. and for a bonus, if this is a favorite and elderly relative you will have a unique and lasting memory on tape.

We did this with my great aunts stuffed cabbage recipe before she passed away (she knew she was dying and wanted to make sure the recipe was passed on) It is a hillarious tape and a family herloim just as much as the recipe....

[Mezzaluna]

Tigerwoman, what I wouldn't give to have my grandmother on tape! However, she died in 1966, before home VCRs were available. But I can still see her hands in the dough to this day.

How lucky you are to have that! (Do consider having it burned on a DVD, as that will last much longer than VHS tape. And keep a copy in the bank box!)

[Athenaeus]

Yes, taping is a great idea...

Some times when I am stuck while preparing a recipe, I close my eyes and I bring to my mind my grandma's hands and gestures... and... there you go

I think that we should stop posting this kind of threads, they always bring tears to my eyes...

[bouland]

I regularly cook recipes from old cookbooks. There are some examples that I published this year at Book Review: Gastronomie Pratique and Blanc-Manger: A Journey Through Time. I've found that I'm usually able to produce good results the first time I try an old recipe, or for sure on the second, using my experience combined with gut instinct. It is always necessary to try to think in terms of the time period in which the original recipe was written. What forms of heat were available? What types of untensils were used for cooking? What foodstuffs were available? And how are they different from those available today?

[Mezzaluna]

I agree, Bouland. Even people's time sense is markedly changed. What we used to "feel" was a short time is now long. "Simmer for a short time" meant perhaps 20 minutes in 1850, but today "a short time" would mean 5 minutes to a lot of people, I'd bet.

We now chafe when our computers take 1 minute to execute a command, and think that an eon. I once read of a study which investigated people's time sense. It compared those who use computers with those who do not. They were asked to sound a buzzer when they thought one minute had elapsed. Those who hadn't been "cyberized" waited more than twice as long as those who were computer users. I wish I could find that study, but it was a real eye-opener.

[ShawtyCat]

Guilty as charged.

My recipe book looks exactly like that. My recipe for Chicken Masala looks like this:

Chicken Breast
Oil
Masala Wine
Chicken Stock
Salt
Pepper
Butter
Mushrooms
Parsley


That is really all I need to know. Everytime I use a printed recipe with measurements it always comes out wrong, so I've taken to just jotting down the ingredients and continuing to do what my mother started. "Here are the ingredients now go figure it out!". Works for me.