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Comment by ChumpGPT | Hacker News Reader

I've spent time reading some old baking books and looking at recipes, thinking I would discover some amazing technique, ingredient, or recipe that would be a game changer. What I discovered was that baking 50 to 200 years ago was primitive and offers very little other than some interesting history. Modern baking ingredients, techniques, and equipment are at such a higher level that there is little usefulness found in these old publications.

I would imagine the same is true for cooking. Our ingredients, equipment (such as temperature control), and techniques are so much better than these old ways of doing things, they just can't compare when it comes to taste and quality. Cooking and baking are sciences that have come a long way and are remarkably better than they have ever been. There is no reason to cook with poisons or questionable practices just for nostalgia's sake.

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I came to this same conclusion after reading Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen" as well. Prior to modern cooking science, it seems like a lot of recipes involved something akin to a religious ritual that accidentally did something beneficial to your food. Now that we understand what is happening, we can use modern techniques to get much better results.

It might have been that book that talked about untapped potential for better flavors by making certain sauces in a microwave oven. The basic theory (as I recall) was that the microwaves would selectively heat oil droplets suspended in a watery sauce, and this would better extract flavor compounds into the oil while not heating the overall sauce enough to damage flavors.

> the microwaves would selectively heat oil droplets

I think it would be the opposite. It would selectively heat the water, because water is polar. That would still be consistent with the effect.

IIUC, while the water heats faster, it has a lower upper limit (the boiling point), while oil and fat keep getting hotter.

Source: I have ruined a few plastic containers by heating greasy food in the microwave, because the fat easily gets hot enough to melt the plastic. Homemade Bolognese sauce seems particularly dangerous in this regard, because it is both acidic and greasy, and that will absolutely EAT plastic.

P. S. Even if you don't damage the plastic per-se, heating oily food in the microwave in a plastic container isn't a good idea, quite a few nasty compounds will leach into the oil more readily than into water.

I recommend Max Miller's Tasting History series on youtube. He certainly covers some unusual recipes and ingredients that still look interesting. Admittedly, I didn't try much of his recipes.

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