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I meant "creative" way less pretentiously than you read it - perhaps more accurate is more like "personalization". People like different things in different amo

I meant "creative" way less pretentiously than you read it - perhaps more accurate is more like "personalization". People like different things in different amounts, so recipes paint a broad target and let home cooks hit whatever particular point in it that they want. Like, making a peanut butter sandwich has this factor - different people like different breads and peanut butters in different amounts, so it's up to you to pick something and make it a food. The underspecified quantities and characteristics in a hypothetical peanut butter sandwich "recipe" are just a hint that you have wide latitude to make choices.

a1369209993 5y ago
> perhaps more accurate is more like "personalization". I agree that seems much more reasonable, but the vagueness doesn't help here: I can't personalize something if I can't even reliably reproduce it in the first place. > a hypothetical peanut butter sandwich "recipe" That's kind of the point - there is no peanut butter sandwich recipe, because you don't need a recipe to make one. If something is fiddly enough to need a recipe, you need the recipe to be at least precise enough that you can actually get the fiddly parts right, and any 'problems' stemming from excess precision can be obviated by an * or ±8grams. *: increase this to make it fluffier, decrease for chewier.
- dendrite9 5y ago
  But a peanut butter does need a recipe if you want to make the same sandwich again and again. And want someone else to be able to make that same sandwich on the other side of the country. I had to deal with this with a friend who had anxiety about cooking. Choosing between 2 and 3 on the stove was an ordeal, what if the 1" cubes of beef are 0.75" instead? I am in the camp where recipes are a guide for an idea or a special occasion. Most of the time I cook whatever vegetables look good at the store and fit a rough sense of what sounds good to me. What kind of bread? (Whole wheat, sourdough, white, shokupan, raisin, olive, berry) Presliced or do you cut your own slices and select your own the thickness? Toasted, fresh, or days old bread? Then you have your peanut butter. Chunky, smooth, really chunky? Pure peanut butter or is a swipe of almond butter good. And do you use jam, jelly, preserves, marmalade? What kind of fruit? Or do you prefer fresh fruit, maybe with some honey on top? There are many options, if you want to reliably reproduce a dish you need to cook a lot and track what you cook in detail. A home cook likely doesn't have the opportunity to get to the point where they can crank out a number of dishes repeatably the way someone in a restaurant can. The scales are just wrong. For my friend, they decided to record exactly what they did while cooking for a while. To me it seemed crazy detailed, I cook by smell and taste and feel. For them it was confirmation they'd rather pay for or otherwise eat food prepared for them.

a1369209993 5y ago

> perhaps more accurate is more like "personalization". I agree that seems much more reasonable, but the vagueness doesn't help here: I can't personalize something if I can't even reliably reproduce it in the first place. > a hypothetical peanut butter sandwich "recipe" That's kind of the point - there is no peanut butter sandwich recipe, because you don't need a recipe to make one. If something is fiddly enough to need a recipe, you need the recipe to be at least precise enough that you can actually get the fiddly parts right, and any 'problems' stemming from excess precision can be obviated by an * or ±8grams. *: increase this to make it fluffier, decrease for chewier.

dendrite9 5y ago
But a peanut butter does need a recipe if you want to make the same sandwich again and again. And want someone else to be able to make that same sandwich on the other side of the country. I had to deal with this with a friend who had anxiety about cooking. Choosing between 2 and 3 on the stove was an ordeal, what if the 1" cubes of beef are 0.75" instead? I am in the camp where recipes are a guide for an idea or a special occasion. Most of the time I cook whatever vegetables look good at the store and fit a rough sense of what sounds good to me. What kind of bread? (Whole wheat, sourdough, white, shokupan, raisin, olive, berry) Presliced or do you cut your own slices and select your own the thickness? Toasted, fresh, or days old bread? Then you have your peanut butter. Chunky, smooth, really chunky? Pure peanut butter or is a swipe of almond butter good. And do you use jam, jelly, preserves, marmalade? What kind of fruit? Or do you prefer fresh fruit, maybe with some honey on top? There are many options, if you want to reliably reproduce a dish you need to cook a lot and track what you cook in detail. A home cook likely doesn't have the opportunity to get to the point where they can crank out a number of dishes repeatably the way someone in a restaurant can. The scales are just wrong. For my friend, they decided to record exactly what they did while cooking for a while. To me it seemed crazy detailed, I cook by smell and taste and feel. For them it was confirmation they'd rather pay for or otherwise eat food prepared for them.