6 ms·

I 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 eleme

I 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 ago
Yeah, it’s genius. I wish every recipe was written in this way.
adhesive_wombat 5y ago
I 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 ago
As 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 ago
  Can 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!
  - martopix 5y ago
    can't say for a cookbook, but try https://www.giallozafferano.com/ https://www.giallozafferano.com/. Giallozafferano has essentially taken over all other italian websites for recipes, because it's clear, with pictures, and has EVERY recipe you can dream of. It also has an English language version as you can see. This said, Italians sometimes criticize it anyway, because it's not always perfectly proper, and because monopoly is never good. But Italians would criticize anything except their grandmothers when it comes to cooking, so I recommend you try it. It's generally a sufficiently good reference benchmark even for Italians and is complete.
    - cycomanic 5y ago
      Thank you so much! Finding good recipes online has become such a disaster because of all the blog recipe spam, especially when looking for international dishes in English where even the decent sites have very "americanized" versions of the dish.
      - martopix 5y ago
        I feel you, as a lover of Asian cuisine who certainly cannot google in Thai or Chinese.
        brimble 5y ago
        Find dish on Wikipedia. It'll have the native name somewhere on the page, probably, or else you can switch to a version of the page in the correct language. Put dish name (and maybe the translated word for "recipe" or "food") in search engine. Find a page that looks like it has what you want. Hit it with Google Translate.
  - saysjonathan 5y ago
    I’m not Italian but I have two favorite reference books: The Silver Spoon[0] and American Sfoglino[1] 0: https://www.phaidon.com/store/food-cook/the-silver-spoon-9780714862569/ https://www.phaidon.com/store/food-cook/the-silver-spoon-978... 1: https://evanfunke.com/orderamericansfoglino https://evanfunke.com/orderamericansfoglino
- ricardobeat 5y ago
  As a third-generation Italian migrant, I'd remind you that food evolves. The grandmas and aunts always made both bolognese and chicken lasagna, with a heavy tomato sauce and a lot of cheese, in a pretty similar way (never any cream though). I'd take that any day over a "proper" one with bechamel!
  - vitus 5y ago
    I smiled when I saw that your pasta dish included chicken, another example of how food evolves.
  - pc86 5y ago
    Nobody said it didn't evolve, and you're the first one to use the word "proper" which has a much different connotation than "traditional." Think of it as a snapshot in an event-sourced system. You can take a bunch of snapshots over time, but #53 is going to be the same every time. A "traditional" lasagna has a bechamel sauce. You can make it without, and it can be as good or better. It just won't be traditional, which is totally fine.
    - esperent 5y ago
      I'm not Italian, but my impression from traveling in Italy is that every town\village\grandma has their own version of nearly every Italian dish and they all consider theirs to be the traditional version. I think I got told three or four times that I was in the village where focaccia was invented - different villages, that is. And they were all quite different focaccias so I guess they were all right. Side note: bechamel lasagne is usually called lasagne al forno and I think it comes from Bologna. In many other parts of Italy they don't use bechamel in their traditional lasagnes, and they often do use ricotta and mozzarella.
  - namdnay 5y ago
    What’s a third generation Italian migrant? Your family has been migrating for three generations? Or you’re just an American with an Italian great-grandparent?
- namdnay 5y ago
  This whole ricotta in lasagna thing is so strange… why on earth would you do that?
  - rfrey 5y ago
    Because it tastes really good.
chasd00 5y ago
i love that diagram! I enjoy cooking just enough to do it but not enough to want to do it. In the consulting world what we call "solution architects", i know it's very weird jargon, would make very good cooks IMO. It's all about scheduling, resource allocation, and following procedure.
silicon2401 5y ago
that kind of schematic is exactly what i've wanted ever since I started trying to learn how to cook recipes (as opposed to just knowing some basic techniques and mixing things I like). I've always wondered why cooking, which is a very procedural and quantitative thing, doesn't have more standardization and conventions. If you're just trying to replicate an existing recipe to the T, it makes so much more sense to use numbers and diagrams than prose (let alone the irrelevant blogs that so many cooking websites attach to their recipe pages).
- jasonladuke0311 5y ago
  > let alone the irrelevant blogs that so many cooking websites attach to their recipe pages I'm pretty sure this is just for SEO hacking
- shagie 5y ago
  > let alone the irrelevant blogs that so many cooking websites attach to their recipe pages Recipes themselves can't be copyrighted. https://copyrightalliance.org/are-recipes-cookbooks-protected-by-copyright/ https://copyrightalliance.org/are-recipes-cookbooks-protecte... > Recipes are usually not protected by copyright due to the idea-expression dichotomy. The idea-expression dichotomy creates a dividing line between ideas, which are not protected by copyright law, and the expression of those ideas, which can be protected by copyright law. > ... > Recipes can be protected under copyright law if they are accompanied by “substantial literary expression.” This expression can be an explanation or detailed directions, which is likely why food and recipe bloggers often share stories and personal anecdotes alongside a recipe’s ingredients.
  - silicon2401 5y ago
    So basically you can copyright your blog which I skipped entirely, but not the actual materials and process, which is all the information of value anyway lol.
jasonladuke0311 5y ago
Oh my god that is brilliant.
shagie 5y ago
> and perhaps one that might have real IP value At the very bottom of the page... > Tabular Recipe Notation Patent Pending (Michael Chu) There's a thread for it in the forums - http://www.cookingforengineers.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=240 http://www.cookingforengineers.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=24... Apparently, he tried to patent it - but in various patent searches I haven't found anything. The thread goes on until August 2021 with occasional activity - but no information on the patent. And for what it's worth... the person who created it hasn't been active on the php forum for the site since 2017.
lkxijlewlf 5y ago
Be interesting to see someone take cooklang recipes and convert them to the recipe "schematic" used by CFE. Hmm... feeling an itch...
- scode2 5y ago
  cooklang is awesome, would love to see something like that

nojs 5y ago

Yeah, it’s genius. I wish every recipe was written in this way.

adhesive_wombat 5y ago

I 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 ago

As 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 ago
Can 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!
- martopix 5y ago
  can't say for a cookbook, but try https://www.giallozafferano.com/ https://www.giallozafferano.com/. Giallozafferano has essentially taken over all other italian websites for recipes, because it's clear, with pictures, and has EVERY recipe you can dream of. It also has an English language version as you can see. This said, Italians sometimes criticize it anyway, because it's not always perfectly proper, and because monopoly is never good. But Italians would criticize anything except their grandmothers when it comes to cooking, so I recommend you try it. It's generally a sufficiently good reference benchmark even for Italians and is complete.
  - cycomanic 5y ago
    Thank you so much! Finding good recipes online has become such a disaster because of all the blog recipe spam, especially when looking for international dishes in English where even the decent sites have very "americanized" versions of the dish.
    - martopix 5y ago
      I feel you, as a lover of Asian cuisine who certainly cannot google in Thai or Chinese.
      - brimble 5y ago
        Find dish on Wikipedia. It'll have the native name somewhere on the page, probably, or else you can switch to a version of the page in the correct language. Put dish name (and maybe the translated word for "recipe" or "food") in search engine. Find a page that looks like it has what you want. Hit it with Google Translate.
- saysjonathan 5y ago
  I’m not Italian but I have two favorite reference books: The Silver Spoon[0] and American Sfoglino[1] 0: https://www.phaidon.com/store/food-cook/the-silver-spoon-9780714862569/ https://www.phaidon.com/store/food-cook/the-silver-spoon-978... 1: https://evanfunke.com/orderamericansfoglino https://evanfunke.com/orderamericansfoglino
ricardobeat 5y ago
As a third-generation Italian migrant, I'd remind you that food evolves. The grandmas and aunts always made both bolognese and chicken lasagna, with a heavy tomato sauce and a lot of cheese, in a pretty similar way (never any cream though). I'd take that any day over a "proper" one with bechamel!
- vitus 5y ago
  I smiled when I saw that your pasta dish included chicken, another example of how food evolves.
- pc86 5y ago
  Nobody said it didn't evolve, and you're the first one to use the word "proper" which has a much different connotation than "traditional." Think of it as a snapshot in an event-sourced system. You can take a bunch of snapshots over time, but #53 is going to be the same every time. A "traditional" lasagna has a bechamel sauce. You can make it without, and it can be as good or better. It just won't be traditional, which is totally fine.
  - esperent 5y ago
    I'm not Italian, but my impression from traveling in Italy is that every town\village\grandma has their own version of nearly every Italian dish and they all consider theirs to be the traditional version. I think I got told three or four times that I was in the village where focaccia was invented - different villages, that is. And they were all quite different focaccias so I guess they were all right. Side note: bechamel lasagne is usually called lasagne al forno and I think it comes from Bologna. In many other parts of Italy they don't use bechamel in their traditional lasagnes, and they often do use ricotta and mozzarella.
- namdnay 5y ago
  What’s a third generation Italian migrant? Your family has been migrating for three generations? Or you’re just an American with an Italian great-grandparent?
namdnay 5y ago
This whole ricotta in lasagna thing is so strange… why on earth would you do that?
- rfrey 5y ago
  Because it tastes really good.

chasd00 5y ago

i love that diagram! I enjoy cooking just enough to do it but not enough to want to do it. In the consulting world what we call "solution architects", i know it's very weird jargon, would make very good cooks IMO. It's all about scheduling, resource allocation, and following procedure.

silicon2401 5y ago

that kind of schematic is exactly what i've wanted ever since I started trying to learn how to cook recipes (as opposed to just knowing some basic techniques and mixing things I like). I've always wondered why cooking, which is a very procedural and quantitative thing, doesn't have more standardization and conventions. If you're just trying to replicate an existing recipe to the T, it makes so much more sense to use numbers and diagrams than prose (let alone the irrelevant blogs that so many cooking websites attach to their recipe pages).

jasonladuke0311 5y ago
> let alone the irrelevant blogs that so many cooking websites attach to their recipe pages I'm pretty sure this is just for SEO hacking
shagie 5y ago
> let alone the irrelevant blogs that so many cooking websites attach to their recipe pages Recipes themselves can't be copyrighted. https://copyrightalliance.org/are-recipes-cookbooks-protected-by-copyright/ https://copyrightalliance.org/are-recipes-cookbooks-protecte... > Recipes are usually not protected by copyright due to the idea-expression dichotomy. The idea-expression dichotomy creates a dividing line between ideas, which are not protected by copyright law, and the expression of those ideas, which can be protected by copyright law. > ... > Recipes can be protected under copyright law if they are accompanied by “substantial literary expression.” This expression can be an explanation or detailed directions, which is likely why food and recipe bloggers often share stories and personal anecdotes alongside a recipe’s ingredients.
- silicon2401 5y ago
  So basically you can copyright your blog which I skipped entirely, but not the actual materials and process, which is all the information of value anyway lol.

jasonladuke0311 5y ago

Oh my god that is brilliant.

shagie 5y ago

> and perhaps one that might have real IP value At the very bottom of the page... > Tabular Recipe Notation Patent Pending (Michael Chu) There's a thread for it in the forums - http://www.cookingforengineers.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=240 http://www.cookingforengineers.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=24... Apparently, he tried to patent it - but in various patent searches I haven't found anything. The thread goes on until August 2021 with occasional activity - but no information on the patent. And for what it's worth... the person who created it hasn't been active on the php forum for the site since 2017.

lkxijlewlf 5y ago

Be interesting to see someone take cooklang recipes and convert them to the recipe "schematic" used by CFE. Hmm... feeling an itch...

scode2 5y ago
cooklang is awesome, would love to see something like that