Thank you for this. I had never considered this "drift" in recipes and ingredients.
A beverage example is the Piña Colada. The original recipe calls for Coco Lopez (see the Regan, The Joy of Mixology), and while you could substitute for some other coconut cream (confusingly, not cream of coconut), it's got the expected amount of sugar and thickeners in that make the classic drink. It's a specialty food in Europe and I assumed it was an antiquity, but no, our local supermarket sells it.
But while you can talk about reproducibility etc, at the end of the day the amount of variation between various brands of canned pumpkins are less that the amount of variation _you_ should consider when making a recipe to match the tastes of those you are making it for.
We have plenty of foods we make at home where we routinely just look at the base recipe and decide "that is too much/little salt/sugar/etc" and we are happy in the end. Harder for baking tho.
Digestives [3] are the typical substitution in my experience, but again nobody knows how close they're getting. They look thicker, to me ...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%27more
Still has the issue of what is this branded product really though.
A biscuit base in the UK would usually require a pack of digestives and a rolling pin. I suppose some supermarket sells crumbled biscuits but...
As an aside, Golden Grahams used to be popular in the UK and I don't think anyone stopped to ask what the name meant.
The current recipe for pound cake calls for 6 large eggs, but the notes on ingredients in the book’s introduction said early recipes needed 12-16 (!!) eggs in order to get one pound of eggs. Side note: pound cake uses 1 lb each of eggs, flour, sugar, and butter
I recently bought an older Better Homes and Gardens cookbook from 1953. I wanted one from before science took over the kitchen too much. I haven’t had a chance to cook anything from it yet, but now I’m questioning if I’ll have issues trying to cook with a 70+ year old cookbook, especially when it comes to baked goods.
I’m not into cooking enough to have the patience to experiment and tune things. If something doesn’t work, I’m more likely to get discouraged and order take out.
If anything, much older recipes tend to be less precise simply because they did not have the technology. Before thermostats were put in ovens, baking was done by feeding a fire by vibes, and then leaving your baked good to sit in the residual heat.
I have no issues cooking from it with modern ingredients because it doesn't fundamentally use things that aren't "base" ingredients or other recipes in it.
The very first thing I learned to cook as a young kid in the late 1950s was a macaroni and cheese recipe from the BH&G cookbook. It was very different frum the creamy mac and cheese recipes that are common today. It didn't have a runny sauce; it had more of a firm custardy texture. You could scoop up chunks of it with a big serving spoon.
I did some brainstorming with ChatGPT, and we found the recipe below.
Could you check your cookbook to see if it has a recipe like this, and possibly take a photo and send it to me? Email is in my profile. Thanks!
---
Old-Fashioned Baked Macaroni and Cheese (circa 1950s BH&G style)
Ingredients:
1½ cups elbow macaroni (uncooked)
2 cups grated sharp cheddar cheese
2 eggs, beaten
2 cups milk (sometimes evaporated milk was used)
1 tsp salt
Dash of pepper
Optional: breadcrumbs or cracker crumbs for topping
Optional: butter for dotting the top
Instructions:
Cook the macaroni in salted water until just tender. Drain.
In a large bowl, combine the hot macaroni with most of the grated cheese.
In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the milk, salt, and pepper.
Pour the egg-milk mixture over the macaroni and cheese, stir gently to combine.
Pour into a buttered casserole dish. Top with the remaining cheese, and optionally a layer of buttered breadcrumbs or crushed crackers.
Bake at 350°F for about 45 minutes, or until set and lightly browned on top.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/comments/ydmncf/searchi... ("From Better homes and gardens cookbook 1953")
The one in this very specific 1953 cookbook is not an egg-based custard, but uses as a thickening agent condensed mushroom soup, from a can.
We were big fans of cream of mushroom soup, though. Our favorite was to mix a can of that and a can of tomato soup (with the usual 50/50 dilution with water). We called it "cream of tomato".
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_egg_sizes#United_State...
That would imply, though, that "one pound" of eggs is more egg now than it was then.