Comment by inanutshellus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by inanutshellus | Hacker News Reader

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Every culinary professional I've ever met proudly proclaims their independence from measuring anything. It's all tasting and experience. "I add more until it looks right." Like ``it's not "3/4c of flour", it's "start with half a cup of flour then keep adding until it looks and feels right".``

As to cookbooks... it's tricky to both not insult the reader and also not waste folks' time.

Like HGTV used to smugly, proudly educate their viewers on how cool and easy it is to remove the pit from an avocado. Then at some point during their "next food network star" show a contestant did that and the hosts rolled their eyes. "Everyone that watches Food Network knows how to do that. Move on please."

> then keep adding until it looks and feels right".

I think something of value that a lot of cooking/baking education misses is showing what it looks like when it's wrong at various stages.

A deflated loaf of bread could have 2-3 reasons why it looks bad but you'd only be able to know what exactly went wrong by knowing at what stage it was wrong(such as insufficient kneading).

Here's the thing, they are making dozens, even hundreds of the same dish, every day. They are going to become intimately familiar with how it's supposed to be. This is on top of having created similar dishes tens of thousands of times already. That's their job. I have a different job, but I still want to make good tasting food home and I only cook a few dishes a day. As a technical writer, I know that having document that both a novice and an expert can access easily is a hard, hard problem. It's doable but there are so many traditions around cookbooks it's hard to get around them.

> "I add more until it looks right." Like ``it's not "3/4c of flour", it's "start with half a cup of flour then keep adding until it looks and feels right".``

This is so annoying. It is like the 'then draw the owl' chain mail joke picture.

If they can't describe what they are doing they lack deep understand of what they are doing. Just give me the ratios.

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