5 ms·

I'm going to have to hard disagree with this take. I do agree that probably a large majority the cookbooks that you can currently walk into a bookstore and buy

by downut 2y ago

I'm going to have to hard disagree with this take. I do agree that probably a large majority the cookbooks that you can currently walk into a bookstore and buy are garbage. But in the comments here are excellent suggestions for proven, classic cookbooks, and you will be a better cook, possibly even a great one, if you absorb them. The stuff written here: "* Measuring ingredients..." is completely unrecognizable to me. For instance, ovens do have hotspots but a solid convection function pretty much eliminates that as an issue. Also, I think there is some confusion about what it means to measure. What competent recipes try to do is balance the need to indicate how much is going to be made ("serves 4-6") and then, this is the key: within that constraint they tell you the ratios of the ingredients. Which is obvious, isn't it? Except I've seen people get annoyed when they don't honor the ratios. Ruhlmann wrote a book about this: "Ratio". His book "Charcuterie" is terrific if you really want to learn how to make tasty stuff.

crabbone 2y ago
So, here's my background: printing and publishing. I studied to make books, worked in printing houses, newspapers, before I turned into a programmer. But that was after I managed to land a "proper" job. Before then, I worked a lot of crappy jobs, including in the kitchen. I'm not a chef by any means, all I'd do in my kitchen jobs would be the boring stuff, like chopping something or frying etc. In my work in the bakery I probably made couple dozens of thousands of doughnuts, but it's not the same as baking them at home, of course. So, it doesn't help with recipes that are normally designed for home-cooking. But, do professional chefs use cookbooks? -- I know the answer to this one. No, they don't. Or, not in the way they are intended. I knew that some would use the books for inspiration for presentation (i.e. how to style a dish), but not for the ingredients or the cooking methods. Sometimes it's just a general idea, but never the instructions or the ingredients list. I.e. someone who trained to be a pastry chef doesn't need a list of ingredients to make, eg. puff-pastry dough. But there are plenty of variations of puff-pastry and similar doughs (eg. filo). So, a book may give a general direction by saying that this or the other particular pastry traditionally uses lemon juice. And the chef would know how to ration it and how to work the dough. The book cannot help with the later aspect, because that, just like any craft requires seeing / working under a master who'd explain how it works. Most of the work of the chef has nothing to do with knowing ingredients or temperatures: the typical stuff that goes into recipes, the stuff you'd find in a cookbook. It's about knowing how to tell if the condition for cooking something is right. Take, another example: making the staple bread of the Middle East, the pitas. Knowing ingredients or temperatures won't help you make a pita have a pocket. There's no instruction that can explain what thickness of the dough do you need to make it work, because that's contingent on the hydration of the dough, the temperature of the oven / pan you use to bake it etc. But, even that isn't enough: you need to know how to kneed the dough, how to tell when it's sufficiently proofed, and this will depend on a lot of factors in your environment (temperature, humidity, age of the yeast, age of the flour, water acidity etc.) that are just not possible to capture well in a book. > convection function That's just not applicable to baking bread / pastry... Not even vegetables really. Maybe will work for something like a stew, or some other potted dishes, where it doesn't really matter how heat is distributed anyways. This isn't a function that I'd use in home-baking (I don't really make stews). And industrial settings are a different story.
- downut 2y ago
  Again this is all just bullshit. I'm being lectured on cooking by somebody who claims it's impossible to document proper cooking techniques. "But, do professional chefs use cookbooks? -- I know the answer to this one. No, they don't." Professional musicians don't use scores when performing (mostly). So what? Are you a professional chef? No, you are not. You are an abject beginner and like a beginner you need a whole shelf full of scores. "There's no instruction that can explain what thickness of the dough do you need to make it work, because that's contingent on the hydration of the dough, the temperature of the oven / pan you use to bake it etc." Hilarious. Secret sauce indeed. Here's an author who has documented these techniques quite explicitly, and famously so: Paula Wolfert. All those words you wrote (did you write them?) and you proved to yourself that cooking is magic, can't be documented, books are useless, yadda yadda. And uh, this is the one that's really "cool": convection ovens don't work on anything but stews, sez the person who "don't really make stews". Oven roasted eggplant slices beg to differ! How about cookies? How about a fucking frozen pizza? Convection broil works pretty good on a lot of things, sez this person, who has cooked a lot of things on convection broil. My wife the family baker is laughing at the convection baking comments you made. Can't yall trolls try a little harder and make it interesting? Did you know that worldwide there are academic culinary historians? So, before I get any more trolls, my wife and I started out as chemical engineers. Do you realize (this is for the trolls) how heavily documented all commercial food processes are? Commercial food processing plants are just chemical plants, which is what we trained to do.
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  Your point that professional chefs go beyond cookbooks is correct. > But, do professional chefs use cookbooks? -- I know the answer to this one. No, they don't. Or, not in the way they are intended. > a book may give a general direction by saying that this or the other particular pastry traditionally uses lemon juice. And the chef would know how to ration it and how to work the dough. This is exactly how cookbooks are intended. A few decades ago there was a more popular genre of cookbook: a huge 200p book that would go to a newly wed wife so she gets better at cooking, and it would have half of it just explaining the basics: how to skin a chicken, how to cut vegetables, how to adjust an oven etc. And you'd go through all these basic training before trying the recipes, which had very terse instructions ("skin the fish, remove the bones, cook it meuniere style"). To me traditional cookbooks are just skipping the training section assuming you've already gone through it all.
crabbone 2y ago
Oh, I thought about a better analogy: the information about ingredients and temperature is about as useful for a good dish as the information about the volume of paints is useful for making a good painting.
- downut 2y ago
  This is just flat out false. Temperature for instance is absolutely essential to the proper cooking of meats to anything but "well done". Or hey, just set the burner to high and rip out a hollandaise sauce. And the ingredients part... LLMs really need to up their game. At this point I think I'm being trolled... and so badly, too. Can't you try a little harder and make it fun?

by downut 2y ago

crabbone 2y ago

So, here's my background: printing and publishing. I studied to make books, worked in printing houses, newspapers, before I turned into a programmer. But that was after I managed to land a "proper" job. Before then, I worked a lot of crappy jobs, including in the kitchen. I'm not a chef by any means, all I'd do in my kitchen jobs would be the boring stuff, like chopping something or frying etc. In my work in the bakery I probably made couple dozens of thousands of doughnuts, but it's not the same as baking them at home, of course. So, it doesn't help with recipes that are normally designed for home-cooking. But, do professional chefs use cookbooks? -- I know the answer to this one. No, they don't. Or, not in the way they are intended. I knew that some would use the books for inspiration for presentation (i.e. how to style a dish), but not for the ingredients or the cooking methods. Sometimes it's just a general idea, but never the instructions or the ingredients list. I.e. someone who trained to be a pastry chef doesn't need a list of ingredients to make, eg. puff-pastry dough. But there are plenty of variations of puff-pastry and similar doughs (eg. filo). So, a book may give a general direction by saying that this or the other particular pastry traditionally uses lemon juice. And the chef would know how to ration it and how to work the dough. The book cannot help with the later aspect, because that, just like any craft requires seeing / working under a master who'd explain how it works. Most of the work of the chef has nothing to do with knowing ingredients or temperatures: the typical stuff that goes into recipes, the stuff you'd find in a cookbook. It's about knowing how to tell if the condition for cooking something is right. Take, another example: making the staple bread of the Middle East, the pitas. Knowing ingredients or temperatures won't help you make a pita have a pocket. There's no instruction that can explain what thickness of the dough do you need to make it work, because that's contingent on the hydration of the dough, the temperature of the oven / pan you use to bake it etc. But, even that isn't enough: you need to know how to kneed the dough, how to tell when it's sufficiently proofed, and this will depend on a lot of factors in your environment (temperature, humidity, age of the yeast, age of the flour, water acidity etc.) that are just not possible to capture well in a book. > convection function That's just not applicable to baking bread / pastry... Not even vegetables really. Maybe will work for something like a stew, or some other potted dishes, where it doesn't really matter how heat is distributed anyways. This isn't a function that I'd use in home-baking (I don't really make stews). And industrial settings are a different story.

downut 2y ago
Again this is all just bullshit. I'm being lectured on cooking by somebody who claims it's impossible to document proper cooking techniques. "But, do professional chefs use cookbooks? -- I know the answer to this one. No, they don't." Professional musicians don't use scores when performing (mostly). So what? Are you a professional chef? No, you are not. You are an abject beginner and like a beginner you need a whole shelf full of scores. "There's no instruction that can explain what thickness of the dough do you need to make it work, because that's contingent on the hydration of the dough, the temperature of the oven / pan you use to bake it etc." Hilarious. Secret sauce indeed. Here's an author who has documented these techniques quite explicitly, and famously so: Paula Wolfert. All those words you wrote (did you write them?) and you proved to yourself that cooking is magic, can't be documented, books are useless, yadda yadda. And uh, this is the one that's really "cool": convection ovens don't work on anything but stews, sez the person who "don't really make stews". Oven roasted eggplant slices beg to differ! How about cookies? How about a fucking frozen pizza? Convection broil works pretty good on a lot of things, sez this person, who has cooked a lot of things on convection broil. My wife the family baker is laughing at the convection baking comments you made. Can't yall trolls try a little harder and make it interesting? Did you know that worldwide there are academic culinary historians? So, before I get any more trolls, my wife and I started out as chemical engineers. Do you realize (this is for the trolls) how heavily documented all commercial food processes are? Commercial food processing plants are just chemical plants, which is what we trained to do.
makeitdouble 2y ago
Your point that professional chefs go beyond cookbooks is correct. > But, do professional chefs use cookbooks? -- I know the answer to this one. No, they don't. Or, not in the way they are intended. > a book may give a general direction by saying that this or the other particular pastry traditionally uses lemon juice. And the chef would know how to ration it and how to work the dough. This is exactly how cookbooks are intended. A few decades ago there was a more popular genre of cookbook: a huge 200p book that would go to a newly wed wife so she gets better at cooking, and it would have half of it just explaining the basics: how to skin a chicken, how to cut vegetables, how to adjust an oven etc. And you'd go through all these basic training before trying the recipes, which had very terse instructions ("skin the fish, remove the bones, cook it meuniere style"). To me traditional cookbooks are just skipping the training section assuming you've already gone through it all.

crabbone 2y ago

Oh, I thought about a better analogy: the information about ingredients and temperature is about as useful for a good dish as the information about the volume of paints is useful for making a good painting.

downut 2y ago
This is just flat out false. Temperature for instance is absolutely essential to the proper cooking of meats to anything but "well done". Or hey, just set the burner to high and rip out a hollandaise sauce. And the ingredients part... LLMs really need to up their game. At this point I think I'm being trolled... and so badly, too. Can't you try a little harder and make it fun?