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Cooking for Engineers
- mywacaday 5y agoThis book is also worth a read for basic cooking that can be built upon but also explains the underlying scientific principles https://www.cookingforgeeks.com/ https://www.cookingforgeeks.com/
- jelliclesfarm 5y agoBlast from the past!! It’s been around for almost two decades now? Thanks!
- cardy31 5y agoFood Lab by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is a great cookbook if you want a scientific approach to your food
- lrhegeba 5y agoNathan Myhrvold (of excel fame) used his microsoft money to create a test kitchen and explore the physical foundations of cooking. His published results were a spectacular success, citing https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/1734386142/ref=sr_1_2?crid=36WP3FQGCD96M&keywords=modern+cuisine&qid=1648203304&sprefix=modern+cuisine%2Caps%2C174&sr=8-2 https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/1734386142/ref=sr_1_2?crid=36... : "Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking is a revolutionary treatment of cooking that pushes the boundaries of the culinary arts. Winner of the 2012 James Beard Award for Cookbook of the Year, inducted into the Gourmand Cookbook Hall of Fame, and named one of the best cookbooks of the century by the New Yorker, its six volumes explore the history of cuisine and explain the science of cooking in a way that’s accessible to both professional chefs and home cooks."
- b215826 5y agohttps://based.cooking/ https://based.cooking/
- schleck8 5y agoWow I can't believe there is a website as straightforward as this in 2022
- RegBarclay 5y agohttps://based.cooking/chocolate-chip-cookies.html https://based.cooking/chocolate-chip-cookies.html Servings: 4 That's about my level of self-control with chocolate chip cookies.
- seanw444 5y agoI was about to mention this. Thank God for Luke Smith.
- datene 5y agoLooks nice, but the advertisements make it almost unusable on mobile. Although they don't always seem to show up
- DantesKite 5y agoEvery time I see an article about cooking, my first instinct is how I can code this information so machines can cook it for me. But there's still so many unsolved problems at the moment, especially around object recognition. Maybe in a few decades. Once that's solved, I imagine there will be a lot of engineers tinkering at home with their robots, sharing code for say cooking the perfect steak, the best coffee, and a general recommendation engine that can predict what you'll probably like. Can't wait. I don't get excited about cooking, but coding cooking machines gets me going.
- john61 5y agoThere is no cooking without taste. Does a computer have taste?
- wartijn_ 5y agoWhat would such a robot do for coffee that a fully automatic coffee machine can't to?
- q3k 5y agoMake good espresso :)
- swiftcoder 5y agoYou can buy "bean to cup" coffee machines, and the high-end models are fairly programmable. It's a single purpose robot, sure, but if you want a fully-automated cup of coffee with minimal human interaction, this is obtainable today.
- silicon2401 5y agomy first instinct with cooking is to experiment with tweaking variables like salt, heat, etc and see how many different outcomes you can get. unfortunately I hate waste so I don't experiment very much. this is one of the things that drew me away from hardware and towards software: you can test anything, as many times as you want, scrap everything and start over, and all it costs is storage and power. anything physical costs storage and power too, but with the added cost of a lot of waste
- samizdis 5y agoI remember this from many years ago. Much as I appreciated the step-by-step instructions and their accompanying pictures, I always thought that the genius element - and perhaps one that might have real IP value - was the schematic representation combining recipes and the cooking process. My favourite example of this is the schematic for the "meat lasagne" recipe, which is at the end of the instructions and before the comments: http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/36/Meat-Lasagna http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/36/Meat-Lasagna
- nojs 5y agoYeah, it’s genius. I wish every recipe was written in this way.
- adhesive_wombat 5y agoI do something similar with any recipe I get. I go through the list of ingredients and draw brackets around things that go together, then indicate which order the "buckets" join together. That way, I can prepare things directly into bowls (or directly into pans) together. I also call out which one needs to go first if there is one. For example, softening butter in the microwave needs to happen first, because it's a combi microwave and oven and I'll need it as an oven later.
- martopix 5y agoAs an Italian I am contractually bound to replying that there is no mozzarella nor ricotta nor cream in traditional meat lasagne. It's a bechamel sauce, made of milk. Booo!
- mhitza 5y agoCan you recommend a cooking book with 100% authentic Italian dishes? All the recipes I find online (especially from US sources) always like to add their own spin on a recipe. I make lasagna using bechamel sauce as well, but you'll also find videos with chefs that add mozarella (or other cheeses) to their bechamel sauce. So a traditional recipe can be sabotaged at every stage of the process!
- DeathArrow 5y agoGreat. All we need now is engineering for cooks. :)
- adultSwim 5y agoHey, they are already reading / writing / modifying recipes..
- 878654Tom 5y agoLove the part where he just puts the metric values but without the crazy conversions. I see many websites do the conversion as 1/2 lb -> 226,79 grams but guess what, I am not going to the butcher and ask for 226,79 grams of meat. Just like I won't do 14,79 ml of oil (1 tbsp) (well, I just use a teaspoon in this case but you get the idea).
- ilkkao 5y agoI see crazy conversions every time I'm using my grill. https://imgur.com/a/rIzUuS6 https://imgur.com/a/rIzUuS6 Labels are clearly converted from F but with some non-perfect formula, 700F is actually 371C not 374C for example. Still trying to figure out the formula used.
- DZittersteyn 5y agoLooks like they did a bit of premature rounding: the difference between 38℃ and 94℃ is 100.8Δ℉ rather than the 100Δ℉ that was probably there in the original markings. It's the closest you can come to the correct values though, 93℃ is off by 1Δ℉ They then assumed 100Δ℉ = 56Δ℃, and applied that to the rest of the dial. That means the values on the dial are off a bit, and should be: 38, 93, 149, 204, 260, 316, 371, 427
- ilkkao 5y agoMakes sense that 56C was just multiplied, thanks! I can tell this story during the next barbecue event!
- anton96 5y agoThe oval shape and the irregularity it gives to the label makes it it a look a bit crazy.
- crispyambulance 5y agoIt doesn't matter. Seriously, virtually any ingredient can be off by as much as 5-10% and often more, it won't matter THAT much and if it does, you can adapt.
- Markoff 5y agoIt's odd to see engineer not using grams everywhere.
- merricksb 5y agoPrevious discussions many years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2745687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2745687 (93 points, July 2011, 27 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=79856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=79856 (20 points, November 2007, 12 comments)
- doix 5y agoI absolutely hate cooking, the effort vs reward is just not worth it in my opinion. This led to me living off Huel[0] for a long time (at home anyway). I stopped buying groceries and only ordered Huel. The amount of time it saves and the cognitive load it frees up is insane. No longer have to wash dishes, you have a single shaker cup that you wash before you prepare your next drink. No longer have to cook anything, food is ready within 2-3 minutes (wash cup, pour water + huel, shake for a minute). No more writing shopping lists to make sure you buy all the ingredients you need for what you want to cook. No more thinking about when you bought something and determining if it's going to poison you or not, 0 food waste as well :). I still ate 'real food' when going out and at the work canteen. But having to never think about food at home is great. I also felt great, having those 3-5 portions of huel a day gave me significantly more energy and I felt like a brain fog was lifted (that I wasn't even aware of before). I've been traveling around for the past ~6 months and I really miss it. I know this kind of reads like an ad, but I have no association with Huel at all. Just a very happy customer. [0] https://huel.com/ https://huel.com/
- ggambetta 5y agoHave you done any blood tests after going with this diet for a few months? Did you take any vitamin/mineral supplements?
- doix 5y ago> Have you done any blood tests after going with this diet for a few months? Nope, I kind of regret not doing something like that to compare before/after. I'm from the UK, you can't just go to your doctor and ask them to do random blood tests if there's nothing wrong with you. They'll politely tell you to go away. Getting them done privately didn't feel worth it, I had little faith in the DIY ones being accurate and getting it done at a clinic was too expensive last time I looked. > Did you take any vitamin/mineral supplements? I took vitamin D supplements, before and after. But that's because we get no sun in Scotland :(.
- chronogram 5y agoAll those products are typically just oats, some protein powder, vitamineral powder and a bunch of flavorings, all blended into dust. You don’t chew because it’s just baby food, so I wonder what your teeth and jaw will be like in a few decades, but nutritionally it’s infinitely better than fast food. But keep in mind it’s all marketing for oats and vitamins.
- ivanche 5y agoI wanted to make something similar for years, just with more focus on timing and multi-threading :) I really cringe when I read recipe for normal people and it says something like "Chop ingredients A and B and put them into bowl. Now add previously prepared mixture of C and D.". I mean, just tell me first to mix C and D, not in the middle of the process. Lazy initialization is not always good :) The same thing when the recipe tells "and now put all of that into preheated oven". Great, now I have to wait for 15 minutes until oven heats. That should be done on the first thread which waits on a barrier until I finish with the dough in the second thread.
- crispyambulance 5y agoOne thing that needs to be said about recipes is that they take practice. Not just for skills like reading it before diving in like a computer interpreter, but also adapting to your own ingredients, taste preferences and constraints. Give yourself a few tries with any new recipe. You'll find they always need tweaks, especially for anything that's complex.
- wirthjason 5y agoThis x 100! Recipe writing (and recipe following) varies a lot. For some people a recipe is a formula, very precise. For others it’s a rough guide of an idea that should be adjusted.
- nsb1 5y agoTotally agree, but if you're a pro and there's extra detail in the recipe, you can ignore it or tailor it to your needs. If you're just getting started or it's an unfamiliar recipe and you don't have any details, you're left hanging. It costs nothing to add in the details to help people along, so why not?
- wirthjason 5y agoI know what you’re staying but a philosophical point I’d argue that there is a cost for adding that information. It implies that if the recipe deviates from the one listed it won’t be as good, as if there is some platonic ideal and the the only way to get there is this recipe. When I started cooking I had a very scientific approach, as if it were like chemistry class in high school. It felt like if the recipe wasn’t exact then it would be garbage, which is far from the truth. Also, there’s a trap where some things are hard to define and are better left to the senses and judgement. When a recipe says “cook for 30-40 minutes” some people feel trapped — which is it, 30 or 40? “Oh no, I cooked it for 45, it’s going to be awful.” Or “I cooked it the time that the recipe stated and the skin came out soggy.”
- RedShift1 5y agoExact quantities at the bottom! LOVE IT. None of those "spoons", "cups", ... nonsense, how are newcomers supposed to understand those. What I want in cooking is reproducable builds!
- maxerickson 5y agoRaw ingredients tend not to be perfectly consistent.
- SAI_Peregrinus 5y agoSpoons and Cups are exact volumes. 1 tsp (US) is 4.928922ml. 1 tsp (UK) is 4.859917ml. 1 tbsp is 3 tsp. 1 cup is 16tsp (of the same variety).
- PennRobotics 5y agoWatching a European cook American recipes is a delight. "What the fuck is a cup?" Umm... Google says 240 milliliters. "Ok. How much butter is that in grams??" And so on, while the rest of the food is burning/sticking/melting. Plus, a "stick" of butter is not sold in Germany. What they have is more than two sticks joined side-by-side.
- chipsa 5y agoWell, problem number one is that you're trying to do volume of butter instead of weight. All the sticks are by weight, so even though they're marked with tbsp on the side (8), the stick is a quarter lb (4oz). So the notional volume is 4 fl oz, and the weight is 4 oz, but the density is not equal to water. The other problem is that density of things can vary wildly. Flour can be 30% different in density depending on how you scoop it ( scoop it into the measuring cup vs scooping with the measuring cup). And of course problem number three is not converting your measurements before you start cooking, just like it's a problem not to mise-en-place your ingredients first. (If you mise-en-place, you've probably got the correct measures of ingredients already).
- SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
- jwsteigerwalt 5y agoI’ve loved this site since 2007!
- ricardobeat 5y agoI miss this side of the web, wish more people would publish their own blogs / zines devoid of any commercial ambitions.
- vhodges 5y agohttp://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/58/Peanut-Butter-Cookies http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/58/Peanut-Butter-C... was the very first thing I ever baked way back when and then I met my now wife and I learned to cook mostly from her. I started late (late 30's) but it's never too late and this site started me on the road. Now I do the majority of day to day cooking. My wife does most of the baking. edit: Came back to say https://www.joyofbaking.com/ https://www.joyofbaking.com/ is/was a site I made a lot of recipes from too.
- peatmoss 5y agoThe pumpkin pie recipe made Thanksgiving for my wife and I the years we spent living in New Zealand (and since). I grew up with canned pumpkin in pies like many americans. This canned filling does not exist in New Zealand, however raw pumpkin is sold in supermarkets and is a common vege in savory dishes. From our first time baking this pie recipe, all other pumpkin pie is dead to us. The pumpkin we bought in NZ turns out to be superior to sugar pumpkin or butternut squash. It is Japanese winter squash or kabocha. If using this recipe with kabocha, cut the sugar by 1/3 to 1/2. It doesn’t need much.
- c-fe 5y agoIn a similar vein to this idea, I have also been wanting to start some sort of cooking blog. The main intention is to write down family recipes and have some sort of reference later on how to cook them. I have so far a single recipe, in a format which I would like to see more recipes in. Intersted in what other people think of it. The recipe: https://cfx.lu/recipes/fondue https://cfx.lu/recipes/fondue In particular, it was important for me to focus on the liquid densities, as a person that wants to attempt this recipe for the first time probably has no reference on what the ideal density of e.g. a cheese fondue is, so I wanted to add videos and pictures to showcase it.
- yitchelle 5y agoReading through the comments in a steak recipe, I came across this ripper of a comment. :-) "You shouldn't have called it "cooking ro engineers" - you should've called it "cooking for men"."
- throwaway290 5y agoSurprised to not see an outcry about this site's lack of https support. I personally think the importance of https is overstated for casual sites like this, but the argument gets always ridiculed on HN.
- cbsmith 5y agoWorth mentioning in the same context: https://www.cookingforgeeks.com/ https://www.cookingforgeeks.com/
- adultSwim 5y agoI love the name but the site's content never really did it for me. For me, J. Kenji López-Alt's work successfully carries out this spirit.