4 ms·

The Pentagon’s recipe for brownies is 26 pages long

49 points by cwan 16y ago

dazzawazza 16y ago
This is just like programming. Someone asks you to add a small feature and you say "sure, that's only a few hours work". Two days later you're finished.
Kadin 16y ago
It's not a "recipe" for brownies. It's a specification for a very specific food item (actually, two items: a brownie and a oatmeal cookie) which form part of an MRE, which has to be shelf-stable for a very long time. One might similarly point and laugh at NASA specifications for hand tools used on the Apollo program. Yeah, a screwdriver is a screwdriver, but there's a world of difference between the $3 one you can pick up at Sears and one that's designed to be usable under extremely harsh and unusual conditions in space. Similarly, there's a world of difference between the pan of Duncan Hines brownies you might make when you want a chocolate fix, and a supply contract for millions of brownies that are going to go into MREs. The thing is interesting because it provides a window into government procurement, which is something most people really don't understand, but it's not meant to be, and really isn't, humorous. (That said, however, the spelling error in the title is pretty bad.)
- senki 16y ago
  A certain level of boilerplate and redundancy is humorous. I'm wondering if all of their food specifications contains that "All ingredients shall be clean, sound, wholesome, and free from foreign material, evidence of rodent or insect infestation, extraneous material, off-odors, off-flavors, and off-colors." (quote from the linked pdf), or just this one. Maybe they should define some general rules, after that a brownie recipe is really only one page.
  - mturmon 16y ago
    The reason that's there is historical instances of profiteers selling substandard food to the military.
    - senki 16y ago
      Obviously the quality should be fine, that should be the default, no need to repeat it in each and every recipe.
      - Dove 16y ago
        Clearly you've not spent any time in the world of defense contracting. The default is to put absolutely every last thing in the contract. If your contract doesn't say, "You can't put sawdust in the brownies," there will be a contractor who says, "What? You didn't say I couldn't." You might laugh. You might suppose there's some common understanding of quality that everyone can deal with. Especially when it comes to brownies. To some degree, I'd agree: it's a defensive attempt to avoid problems encountered in the past, and maybe an overreaction. The thing is, though, with weapons systems, the equivalent of putting sawdust in brownies happens all the time. The contractor doesn't live in Alaska, or on a carrier deck, where the thing will be deployed, and if the contract doesn't specifically mention cold or fungus or salt corrosion, it'll get overlooked. Worse, the contractor really has no experience in a combat zone, and has no idea what sort of abuse their equipment will undergo. The contract has to say. The defensiveness comes partly from the fact that these systems get a single iteration. There's some back and forth during testing and verification, and there are always contracts for upgrades and improvements. But by and large, you really need things to work right the first time. Hence the heavy reliance on contracts and standards. They're like an API telling the civilian contractor what's required in a battlefield environment. He really doesn't know things that soldiers consider obvious.
        senki 16y ago
        I meant that they should write down these trivial things once in a standard, and later just refer to it in every recipe in two words. This spec already contains references to several federal and military standards, but clearly not enough. Thats why it's such a bloated piece of sh... paper.
  - JimmyL 16y ago
    If they didn't put that in, what would stop a less-than-honorable supplier from low-balling the contract, using rodent-infested wheat, and then suing the DoD when they get their contract canceled because someone finds rat feces in their brownie? Or more broadly, what would allow the DoD to cancel that contract in the first place in that example, if the specs didn't say they had to be free of the stuff?
eplanit 16y ago
A 26-page Brownie recipe is perfectly fine with me (I have to take advantage of the chance to echo 'Heck of job, Brownie!'). Compare/contrast with the inefficiencies in communications you see in businesses and organizations everywhere. I've never seen a simple project that, when done in Corporate America, doesn't require 6 months, reams of documents, and hours of meetings. In other words...in large institutions, nothing is very efficient.
- eli 16y ago
  True to some degree, but it's also about having a level of detail needed for something that many people will rely on. Give a simple brownie recipe to enough people and one them will burn down the house because you never specifically said to turn off the oven when done baking.
  - btilly 16y ago
    But give a 26 page brownie recipe to enough people and one of them will burn down the house because they missed the instruction saying when to turn off the oven. There is a common organizational failure mode where new instructions are added whenever anyone messes up, ignoring the fact that the complexity of the instructions is leading to lots of mistakes.
    - gte910h 16y ago
      Incorrect. The endeavor itself (making long shelf life brownies/cookies) has a set of requirements which is pretty exacting. The complexity of the instructions will likely be turned into long checklists and procedures for the actual producing plant. And if the plant screws up said brownies, they'll likely be on the hook to replace the whole lot of MREs You're confusing quality/policy issues in corporations with inter-entity contracts between an easy to cheat organization (the military) with a group of people who have a history of cheating (the military contractors).
      - derefr 16y ago
        > The complexity of the instructions will likely be turned into long checklists and procedures for the actual producing plant. It'd be nice if our system of interpreted case law were turned into some form of checklists and procedures; then we wouldn't need lawyers. That is to say, the one "contract" that affects every man, woman and child—federal law—has been screwed up in exactly this way, by providing so much of it that no one has any idea what it says without years of study. There is a difference between clarity and verbosity.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
chr15 16y ago
This is a military specification for brownies to be packaged in MREs, not a recipe. Probably not much different from software specifications. It's not uncommon to find documents like this is government. Everything must be explicit so that there is little room for assumptions (I guess that's why it's called a specification). If you have a question about something, you refer to the spec. It also ensures that each brownie produced meets a certain quality standard, and that contractors producing the brownie know exactly how to produce them.
RyanMcGreal 16y ago
Don't scoff at this until you've tasted military-grade walnuts.
pixelbath 16y ago
Except that the actual recipe itself (combining and cooking ingredients) only takes up half a page. The rest is not just boilerplate (no pun intended), it's a specification regarding ingredient and package quality.

49 points by cwan 16y ago

This is just like programming. Someone asks you to add a small feature and you say "sure, that's only a few hours work". Two days later you're finished.

Kadin 16y ago

It's not a "recipe" for brownies. It's a specification for a very specific food item (actually, two items: a brownie and a oatmeal cookie) which form part of an MRE, which has to be shelf-stable for a very long time. One might similarly point and laugh at NASA specifications for hand tools used on the Apollo program. Yeah, a screwdriver is a screwdriver, but there's a world of difference between the $3 one you can pick up at Sears and one that's designed to be usable under extremely harsh and unusual conditions in space. Similarly, there's a world of difference between the pan of Duncan Hines brownies you might make when you want a chocolate fix, and a supply contract for millions of brownies that are going to go into MREs. The thing is interesting because it provides a window into government procurement, which is something most people really don't understand, but it's not meant to be, and really isn't, humorous. (That said, however, the spelling error in the title is pretty bad.)

senki 16y ago
A certain level of boilerplate and redundancy is humorous. I'm wondering if all of their food specifications contains that "All ingredients shall be clean, sound, wholesome, and free from foreign material, evidence of rodent or insect infestation, extraneous material, off-odors, off-flavors, and off-colors." (quote from the linked pdf), or just this one. Maybe they should define some general rules, after that a brownie recipe is really only one page.
- mturmon 16y ago
  The reason that's there is historical instances of profiteers selling substandard food to the military.
  - senki 16y ago
    Obviously the quality should be fine, that should be the default, no need to repeat it in each and every recipe.
    - Dove 16y ago
      Clearly you've not spent any time in the world of defense contracting. The default is to put absolutely every last thing in the contract. If your contract doesn't say, "You can't put sawdust in the brownies," there will be a contractor who says, "What? You didn't say I couldn't." You might laugh. You might suppose there's some common understanding of quality that everyone can deal with. Especially when it comes to brownies. To some degree, I'd agree: it's a defensive attempt to avoid problems encountered in the past, and maybe an overreaction. The thing is, though, with weapons systems, the equivalent of putting sawdust in brownies happens all the time. The contractor doesn't live in Alaska, or on a carrier deck, where the thing will be deployed, and if the contract doesn't specifically mention cold or fungus or salt corrosion, it'll get overlooked. Worse, the contractor really has no experience in a combat zone, and has no idea what sort of abuse their equipment will undergo. The contract has to say. The defensiveness comes partly from the fact that these systems get a single iteration. There's some back and forth during testing and verification, and there are always contracts for upgrades and improvements. But by and large, you really need things to work right the first time. Hence the heavy reliance on contracts and standards. They're like an API telling the civilian contractor what's required in a battlefield environment. He really doesn't know things that soldiers consider obvious.
      - senki 16y ago
        I meant that they should write down these trivial things once in a standard, and later just refer to it in every recipe in two words. This spec already contains references to several federal and military standards, but clearly not enough. Thats why it's such a bloated piece of sh... paper.
- JimmyL 16y ago
  If they didn't put that in, what would stop a less-than-honorable supplier from low-balling the contract, using rodent-infested wheat, and then suing the DoD when they get their contract canceled because someone finds rat feces in their brownie? Or more broadly, what would allow the DoD to cancel that contract in the first place in that example, if the specs didn't say they had to be free of the stuff?

eplanit 16y ago

A 26-page Brownie recipe is perfectly fine with me (I have to take advantage of the chance to echo 'Heck of job, Brownie!'). Compare/contrast with the inefficiencies in communications you see in businesses and organizations everywhere. I've never seen a simple project that, when done in Corporate America, doesn't require 6 months, reams of documents, and hours of meetings. In other words...in large institutions, nothing is very efficient.

eli 16y ago
True to some degree, but it's also about having a level of detail needed for something that many people will rely on. Give a simple brownie recipe to enough people and one them will burn down the house because you never specifically said to turn off the oven when done baking.
- btilly 16y ago
  But give a 26 page brownie recipe to enough people and one of them will burn down the house because they missed the instruction saying when to turn off the oven. There is a common organizational failure mode where new instructions are added whenever anyone messes up, ignoring the fact that the complexity of the instructions is leading to lots of mistakes.
  - gte910h 16y ago
    Incorrect. The endeavor itself (making long shelf life brownies/cookies) has a set of requirements which is pretty exacting. The complexity of the instructions will likely be turned into long checklists and procedures for the actual producing plant. And if the plant screws up said brownies, they'll likely be on the hook to replace the whole lot of MREs You're confusing quality/policy issues in corporations with inter-entity contracts between an easy to cheat organization (the military) with a group of people who have a history of cheating (the military contractors).
    - derefr 16y ago
      > The complexity of the instructions will likely be turned into long checklists and procedures for the actual producing plant. It'd be nice if our system of interpreted case law were turned into some form of checklists and procedures; then we wouldn't need lawyers. That is to say, the one "contract" that affects every man, woman and child—federal law—has been screwed up in exactly this way, by providing so much of it that no one has any idea what it says without years of study. There is a difference between clarity and verbosity.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

chr15 16y ago

This is a military specification for brownies to be packaged in MREs, not a recipe. Probably not much different from software specifications. It's not uncommon to find documents like this is government. Everything must be explicit so that there is little room for assumptions (I guess that's why it's called a specification). If you have a question about something, you refer to the spec. It also ensures that each brownie produced meets a certain quality standard, and that contractors producing the brownie know exactly how to produce them.

RyanMcGreal 16y ago

Don't scoff at this until you've tasted military-grade walnuts.

pixelbath 16y ago

Except that the actual recipe itself (combining and cooking ingredients) only takes up half a page. The rest is not just boilerplate (no pun intended), it's a specification regarding ingredient and package quality.