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"Cooking For Engineers" - A New Format Of Presenting Recipes


zoramargolis

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A long response.

I like the engineer guy.  He's posted some good stuff.  He's on the right track with this recipe format, but I think it would be hard to follow in the heat of preparing something in the kitchen.

I have thought about this problem over the years.  Badly formatted recipes are a pity.  Fuchsia Dunlop is a perfect example.  Great dishes for which she is to be widely commended (James Beard award), but recipes so poorly formatted that they unnecessarily get in the way, especially when doing a dish where you have several steps compressed into a short time.

When I took some professional classes years ago, the teachers shot out recipes staccato, and it was a job to keep up.  Of necessity I developed a style of writing them down that worked for me, and further developed the format over the years.  I even thought at one time of putting together a cookbook based on the format, and wrote several recipes using it, but the idea died for various reasons.

The key is to clearly separate the recipe into its two basic parts:  First, prep and assembly of everything needed grouped into a complete mise en place,  and then the actual cooking steps with cross-references back to the ingredients list.  Nothing earth-shattering, it's done to some degree in any recipe, but it's seldom done methodically.

To illustrate, I took the recipe linked above and re-wrote it in my format.  Here it is:  (sorry spacing is a little dicey due to the web page)

PREP INGREDIENTS AND GROUP THEM AS FOLLOWS

A.    1 1/2 lb. russet potatoes, peeled and rough diced
B.    1 lb. unsalted butter softened
C.    Salt
        Ground white pepper
D.    3 Tbls. Vegetable oil
E.    1 medium onion diced
       1 celery stalk diced
       1 medium carrot peeled and diced
F.     1 lb. ground lamb
G.    1 Tbls. flour
H.    1 tsp. dried rosemary
       1 tsp. dried thyme
       1 pinch ground nutmeg
       1 cup beef broth
I.     Salt
       Pepper
J.    2 Tbls. butter cut into small pieces
       Paprika

COOK IN STEPS AS FOLLOWS

1.    Cover potatoes (A) with water and boil until tender; drain, then add back 1/2 cup of water
2.    Add butter (B] and mash well; add salt and pepper (C] to taste: set potatoes aside
3.    In skillet heat oil (D); add vegetables (E); saute (low heat) until tender; add  lamb (F) cook until just done
4.    Add flour (G), mix well: add spices and broth (H), and cook until liquid thickens; add salt and pepper (I) to taste
5.    Place meat in casserole, cover with mashed potatoes; dot and sprinkle with butter and paprika (J)
6.    Bake at 400 F for 30 min.

Just to read it It looks like overkill, but when you're in the kitchen actually doing it it works.  It does pretty much the same thing as the linked version, but to me it's easier to follow.  You cook step by step, simply reaching for each group of pre-grouped ingredients in the order needed and check them off as you go along. Not something that those who post here need, but helpful for those less practiced?

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John-- your recipe is easy to follow, for those accustomed to narrative instructions, which is all of us. The engineer's recipe is more visually organized and a very different way of presenting the information. Not saying that it's better, just interesting to think about. Your recipe presumes that prep is all done prior to cooking. In today's New York Times, Mark Bittman suggests that time can be saved by not making a complete mise en place, but prepping some ingedients while others have already begun cooking. His is the way I have always cooked. click

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I've never had any trouble following Fuchsia's recipes. As with most East Asian food, most of your time is spent prepping, which you can do slowly while you read the recipe if it's the first time making the dish. For the actual cooking, you need to memorize the steps though, because it happens so quickly, but once you "crack the code" of the cooking methods, so to speak, it becomes pretty simple. Maybe that's just me though. I read cookbooks for fun.

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For the actual cooking, you need to memorize the steps though, because it happens so quickly, but once you "crack the code" of the cooking methods, so to speak, it becomes pretty simple.

Well, this is sorta my point.  I don't think the user ought to be required to fully memorize the recipe before going into the kitchen to try it, particularly given that a mistake as one goes along can be troublesome.  Others may have better short-term memory than I.  But how many fully memorize a complex new recipe, and don't need to refer to it during preparation?  Why not format the recipe correctly, making it easy to use as the process unfolds, so the issue doesn't arise?

Again, I love Fushcia Dunlop, and have nothing but respect for what she's accomplished for aspiring home Chinese cooks, but too often her recipe formats, frankly, suck, and it's just not necessary.

John-- your recipe is easy to follow, for those accustomed to narrative instructions, which is all of us. The engineer's recipe is more visually organized and a very different way of presenting the information. Not saying that it's better, just interesting to think about. Your recipe presumes that prep is all done prior to cooking. In today's New York Times, Mark Bittman suggests that time can be saved by not making a complete mise en place, but prepping some ingedients while others have already begun cooking. His is the way I have always cooked. click

I wouldn't say that my suggested approach presumes everything is prepped prior to cooking.  In this case, for example,  even a novice cook could see that one could prep the meat ingredients while the potatoes are cooking, if that is what one wants to do.  More generally, it would be possible to add such notations to a recipe done in the format I suggested, but the recipe writer has to stop somewhere, hopefully before specificity becomes the enemy of creativity.  Like everything in life, it's a balancing act, and everybody's preference is different.

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This is fascinating and very cool. :)

I suspect that the best mode of delivery varies with the experience of the cook with the techniques involved. I often do completely memorize a recipe before I make it--or rather, what I do is mentally walk through the process, often shifting around the order of the steps to make the entire thing flow more smoothly. Then I refer to the written recipe for quantities. It's not so much memorization as it is creating a plan of attack for the work.

I only do this, however, with recipes where I'm very familiar with the techniques involved.

I will say that I much prefer having all the ingredients grouped together. Usually my first step is "check that all the ingredients are on hand" -- some books (Joy of Cooking, looking at you!) list the ingredients (set aside, in boldface) within the narrative of the recipe. Which is a pain if you are skimming and forget to turn the page, then get half way through the recipe and don't have any wombat oil on hand.

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John-- your recipe is easy to follow, for those accustomed to narrative instructions, which is all of us. The engineer's recipe is more visually organized and a very different way of presenting the information. Not saying that it's better, just interesting to think about. Your recipe presumes that prep is all done prior to cooking. In today's New York Times, Mark Bittman suggests that time can be saved by not making a complete mise en place, but prepping some ingedients while others have already begun cooking. His is the way I have always cooked. click

Assuming the engineer's recipe is correct, it appeals to my eye more than does the standard narrative. It's about accomplishing a multi-item task, sometimes multi-tasking, and illustrates these in a much more obvious (to me, anyway) format than linear.

There may be obvious flaws with this recipe in terms of optimization. For example. Is it clear what *must* be done first? Is it clear what *may* be done first? Can you cook that lamb first? Or must you wait until the onions, carrots, and celery are finished before you can start? Is there no multi-tasking available here?

This is also a very simple recipe - I'd like to see it done on a more complex one. Also, I'd like to see some sort of "mathematical proof" (for lack of a better term) to see if it works in the general case. Or, if it doesn't, I'd like to discover a presentation that does. Regardless, it does show some ingenuity drawn from managerial science - you have a project consisting of several steps, some of which can be performed simultaneously, some lying on the critical path, some dependent on others. This is all very interesting to me.

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It makes my eyes glaze over, though I'm very decidedly a non-engineer.   It would take me a very long time to make a recipe by that method.  It must work for other people, though, since the site has been around a long time.

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