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OK. What if you have a dinner party for 6 guests, but your recipe is written to give 8 portions?

• Zancarius 8y ago
  What I'd do in this case (and this is true for most everyone I know) depends on what "portion" means: - If it's something that can be reasonably divided among guests (such as a soup or something similar), then I eyeball the portions so they're all approximately even. Optionally, if there's an ample amount, you can simply let people decide how much they want through self-service. - If it's something that's demarcated by physical objects (e.g. dinner rolls, cupcakes, etc), then you have a few other options: Leftovers to save for later, split them among people who want extra, or give them away to whomever wants them. I don't know about the OP you're replying to, but I rarely divide a recipe up based on expected portions since portion size is highly variable. Should I have extra left over, then I deal with that accordingly. If I'm cooking to get rid of an ingredient, I don't particularly care if I miss the mark by a few portions provided I have enough in the first place for the objective. (The other problem is that portioning in this question seems to me to assume that all guests are equally hungry.)
• moate 8y ago
  That's solving a different problem. Again: I understand how to scale a recipe (which is what you're describing). Let's do this as a math problem. How I tend to cook: Xbutter + Ysugar + ZFlour = 20 Cookies. How OP is cooking: 2 butter + Ysugar +ZFlour = X We're setting different known quantities (him butter, me portions) and then solving for the rest. They're fundamentally different approaches in cooking philosophy. And again, neither is "wrong" I just found OP's style to be novel enough to comment on