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A Nation Of Culinary Illiterates


Heather

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Cooking 101: Add one Cup of Simplicity

From the article:

At Kraft Foods, recipes never include words like "dredge" and "sauté." Betty Crocker recipes avoid "braise" and "truss." Land O' Lakes has all but banned "fold" and "cream" from its cooking instructions. And Pillsbury carefully sidesteps "simmer" and "sear."

When the country's top food companies want to create recipes that millions of Americans will be able to understand, there seems to be one guiding principle: They need to be written for a nation of culinary illiterates.

Any thoughts?

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I have mixed feelings about this. I have a visceral dislike of dumbing down, which I generally don't think is helpful for educating your audience, since the dumbing down can lead to not entirely accurate descriptions of what technique to use. Nor is it helpful for engaging already-knowledgeable people who might be interested in using your product, for the same reason. On the other hand, I have cookbooks that assume a certain amount of knowledge about cooking in their recipes, which caused a lot of frustration when I started cooking. I can see how an inability to understand the instructions might cause someone to avoid learning to cook because it's "too difficult," or the recipe "never comes out right."

The Joy of Cooking glossary discussed in the article sounds like a good way to avoid dumbing down, while at the same time making cooking accessible. I wonder if it's really practical for "on the box" recipes, though.

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The article rather stunned me. I had a stay-at-home mother who taught me a lot of the basics and I assumed that was so for most people. DUH!

While I hate to put the remedy of society's ills on the schools, I DO think a basic course in what used to be called "Home Economics" ought to be required for both boys and girls. I'm thinking of my late FIL here. He and my late MIL divvied up the duties in the traditional manner: he made the money and she raised the kids and kept the house. She did all the cooking, even after he retired. When she died, he was in a world of hurt because he really didn't know a thing about cooking.

I can't blame the food companies and magazines for trying to accommodate their audience. If folks don't know the basics, then they have to deal with that. Now I understand where all those bad meals at someone's house (a thread on eGullet) came from. Kind of sad, really.

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Maybe I'm mistaken, but I thought Joy of Cooking was already accessible! I use it as a glossary for all of my other cookbooks.

I asked the non-cooking husband to define each of the terms/techniques listed in the article. The only one he failed was "truss" - but he had general idea and in context would have figured out what to do.

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Considering that even adults these days have forgotten how to capitalize at the begining of a sentence and use proper punctuation (a MAJOR pet peeve of mine) it is no surprise that recipe writers feel the need to dumb down their recipes. I think that the use of a glossary is a good solution.

Very few students learn any form of cooking, let alone the proper terms, in school these days (because we have to spend so much time reteaching capitalization <_< ) so they are going to have to learn the information somewhere. A glossary in one of the best basic cookbooks out there is a good place to start.

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Hi, and welcome to this week's "Wow.....THEY are not US", the show that examines the fundamental differences and silly foibles of people who are not food-crazed maniacs. Today we'll be examining cookbooks and instructions from mass-market processed food companies targeted at people with neither the time nor the inclination to learn to cook properly. And you know what? That's practically a selling point! Alright, let's get down to business. With me in the studio today is...

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....alright alright, it's not about being a 'food crazy maniac' that you need cookbooks with real cooking terms in them, but who can argue that times haven't changed and priorities haven't shifted? It's not about knowing how to cook, or deriving enjoyment from it all day every day, it's about getting whatever Kraft Dinner on the table as quickly as possible so you can get little Trevor and Ashley off to soccer practice. Few people do the June Cleaver thing anymore, and if The Gallery of Regrettable Food is any indication, she used as much convenience food and canned whatever as anybody else. This is just the continuation of a trend that started decades ago.

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This is why 'chefs' like Sandra Lee can get away with having a cooking show where she makes such things as Crab Bisque. The recipe? "Take a jar of Crab Bisque, heat it up, add a 1/2 cup of cream and canned crabmeat. Serve." For dessert, a store-bought angel food cake iced with Cool Whip.

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It's not about knowing how to cook, or deriving enjoyment from it all day every day, it's about getting whatever Kraft Dinner on the table as quickly as possible so you can get little Trevor and Ashley off to soccer practice.

Those damn working women! Why don't they get back in the kitchen where they belong? <_<

Few people do the June Cleaver thing anymore...

Thank God. Seriously, most of the competent home cooks of the generation prior to mine (I grew up in the 60's and 70's) didn't do it for enjoyment. I would be willing to bet serious money on that. It's part of keeping house, a chore just like mopping. Most of the women of my generation see it like that too, but they have more convenience foods, prepared options, and disposable income for takeout. The "home cook" in its current iteration is a mid-20th century construct - when the middle class could afford servants often the first to be hired was a cook.

The skills are no longer used or needed, so vocubulary is disappearing along with the skills. Why anyone should be surprised by that is a mystery.

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Also, the ventilation in almost every house these days stinks. Y'know, occasionally, serious cooking creates smoke, and without a hood, you're left waving towels at the smoke detector, or turning it off and then back on, or hoping you've opened the right windows to get the right draft. So people are scared of searing, browning, etc etc. When we chose to build a new house, I told my wife the only thing I felt strongly about was getting a hood. Best decision I've ever made.

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Also, the ventilation in almost every house these days stinks.  Y'know, occasionally, serious cooking creates smoke, and without a hood, you're left waving towels at the smoke detector, or turning it off and then back on, or hoping you've opened the right windows to get the right draft.  So people are scared of searing, browning, etc etc.  When we chose to build a new house, I told my wife the only thing I felt strongly about was getting a hood.  Best decision I've ever made.

Damned smoke detectors. Maybe they've saved lives over the last few decades, sure, but at the cost of how many destroyed palates! Is it worth it, I ask? <_<

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Damned smoke detectors.  Maybe they've saved lives over the last few decades, sure, but at the cost of how many destroyed palates!  Is it worth it, I ask?  <_<

Mine serves quite well as the modern version of a dinner bell.
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The recipe?  "Take a jar of Crab Bisque, heat it up, add a 1/2 cup of cream and canned crabmeat.  Serve."  For dessert, a store-bought angel food cake iced with Cool Whip.

I was going to say something about the difference between "dumbing down" and "raising the veil of obfuscation" but others have made that point. So instead, let me share with you the first example that made me aware of "dumbing down" recipes.

About a dozen years ago, somebody tossed me a can of Kraft Parmesan-type Grated Cheese and told me to read the label. The recipe was for spaghetti with sauce, and said (to wit): boil spaghetti, heat and add your favorite ready-made jar of spaghetti sauce, and sprinkle with Kraft-brand Parmesan-type Grated Cheese.

Ahhh, but the kicker. Ready?

"Variation: Recipe may be halved." <_<

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The product manufacturer's recipes don't interest me. They are, and have always been, written for the non-cook and it is perfectly natural that people have turned to premade products. Think about soap. The average housewife, once upon a time, had as part of her basic knowledge how to make soap. Once manufactured soap became available and cheap enough for the masses, the knowledge shrunk to those few who pursue soap-making as a hobby. Menial labor transformed into craft with cachet because "nobody does it themselves anymore". How is that any different than what has happened to cooking?

Another example: Once manufactured bread became available and cheap enough for most people then bread-making bit the dust. "He bakes his own bread" is now a compliment, right? Usually followed by "I wonder how he has the time for it?"

We the food-obsessed can scoff all we want, but what most people want is an alternative to doing it themselves. And once again, it's no great surprise that vocabulary disappears along with the skills.

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All right Rocks, you've succeeded in writing a post that had no full stops. Now, please write your next "lettre" in such a way that it compiles correctly. Programming language of your choice this week, next week shogun sets the terms.

Edit: thousand lashes with a verb-tense wet noodle.

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