recipe format ideas
Ruth
Are you going to standardize for sea level, or make mention of what
altitude
it is for? Count me in. What about C or F?
Joseph Hall
software would be able to convert easily anyway. I'm going to call that
a function of the software.
High altitude is a really good point. For instance, I have a recipe for
a Spanish orange cake. The first time I made it, it was at maybe 300ft
above sea level, in New Hampshire. The next time I made it, it was
closer to (I believe) 4950ft above sea level, in Park City. We ended up
cutting the baking soda in half and decreasing the amount of sugar, in
order to compensate for the altitude.
The professionals usually tell you that most recipes are written at sea
level. But most of the members of this list are in Utah, significantly
above sea level. And I'm willing to bet that most people in Utah have
recipes that just work for them, and they don't even think about
altitude. Give the same recipes to somebody in Virginia, and they may
not even work. What do all you think it would take to include high
altitude considerations in our format?
Hans Fugal
>
> I don't think C or F really will matter much, since hopefully the
> software would be able to convert easily anyway. I'm going to call that
> a function of the software.
Au contraire, we need to either pick one or define a standard way to
specify which is in use. The software can then convert it according to
preferences. My vote is with C.
> High altitude is a really good point. For instance, I have a recipe for
> a Spanish orange cake. The first time I made it, it was at maybe 300ft
> above sea level, in New Hampshire. The next time I made it, it was
> closer to (I believe) 4950ft above sea level, in Park City. We ended up
> cutting the baking soda in half and decreasing the amount of sugar, in
> order to compensate for the altitude.
>
> The professionals usually tell you that most recipes are written at sea
> level. But most of the members of this list are in Utah, significantly
> above sea level. And I'm willing to bet that most people in Utah have
> recipes that just work for them, and they don't even think about
> altitude. Give the same recipes to somebody in Virginia, and they may
> not even work. What do all you think it would take to include high
> altitude considerations in our format?
I think everyone should live above 5000 ft. Problem solved.
--
Hans Fugal ; http://hans.fugal.net
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the
right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
-- Johann Sebastian Bach
Corey Edwards
> On Sun, 30 Apr 2006 at 13:31 -0000, Joseph Hall wrote:
> >
> > I don't think C or F really will matter much, since hopefully the
> > software would be able to convert easily anyway. I'm going to call that
> > a function of the software.
>
> Au contraire, we need to either pick one or define a standard way to
> specify which is in use. The software can then convert it according to
> preferences. My vote is with C.
Conversion between the two is pretty simple, I don't see why we can't
allow 212F or 100C. Parsing is easy. Weren't you the free form champion?
> > High altitude is a really good point. For instance, I have a recipe for
> > a Spanish orange cake. The first time I made it, it was at maybe 300ft
> > above sea level, in New Hampshire. The next time I made it, it was
> > closer to (I believe) 4950ft above sea level, in Park City. We ended up
> > cutting the baking soda in half and decreasing the amount of sugar, in
> > order to compensate for the altitude.
> >
> > The professionals usually tell you that most recipes are written at sea
> > level. But most of the members of this list are in Utah, significantly
> > above sea level. And I'm willing to bet that most people in Utah have
> > recipes that just work for them, and they don't even think about
> > altitude. Give the same recipes to somebody in Virginia, and they may
> > not even work. What do all you think it would take to include high
> > altitude considerations in our format?
Are altitude differences easy enough to write up as an algorithm, or do
they vary with the recipe? For example, can you just assume "increase
the amount of water by 15% if above 4kft"? Is it all or nothing, or
stratisfied, ie. different rules for 0-2kft, 2-4kft, 4-8kft, etc? Is
there any sort of standard for what constitutes a "high" elevation?
For the most part I never notice differences between printed recipes and
my results, despite being ~4500 ft. That could just be that I mess the
recipe up so much that the subtle changes from elevation are lost.
The two possibilities I see are to include an alternative version, ala
MIME multi-part email, or to have a note for high altitude variations.
The latter seems to be how most cookbooks are done and would be most
familiar to cooks, I think. I would make sure it's a specific section
rather than just a generic note so that recipe software could filter
based on "has high-altitude version".
Corey
Hans Fugal
> On Sun, 2006-04-30 at 13:00 -0600, Hans Fugal wrote:
>> On Sun, 30 Apr 2006 at 13:31 -0000, Joseph Hall wrote:
>>> I don't think C or F really will matter much, since hopefully the
>>> software would be able to convert easily anyway. I'm going to call that
>>> a function of the software.
>> Au contraire, we need to either pick one or define a standard way to
>> specify which is in use. The software can then convert it according to
>> preferences. My vote is with C.
>
> Conversion between the two is pretty simple, I don't see why we can't
> allow 212F or 100C. Parsing is easy. Weren't you the free form champion?
that's me :-) 212F or 100C works fine, but what if someone leaves off
the F or C, or decides to go through the trouble to figure out how to
type that little degree symbol too, or type 212 deg, etc. Remember my
free form isn't really free, it's just the illusion of free. Oven temp
is such a specific bit of information that if you're going to bother
having it at all you might as well fully define what it means.
>>> High altitude is a really good point. For instance, I have a recipe for
>>> a Spanish orange cake. The first time I made it, it was at maybe 300ft
>>> above sea level, in New Hampshire. The next time I made it, it was
>>> closer to (I believe) 4950ft above sea level, in Park City. We ended up
>>> cutting the baking soda in half and decreasing the amount of sugar, in
>>> order to compensate for the altitude.
>>>
>>> The professionals usually tell you that most recipes are written at sea
>>> level. But most of the members of this list are in Utah, significantly
>>> above sea level. And I'm willing to bet that most people in Utah have
>>> recipes that just work for them, and they don't even think about
>>> altitude. Give the same recipes to somebody in Virginia, and they may
>>> not even work. What do all you think it would take to include high
>>> altitude considerations in our format?
>
> Are altitude differences easy enough to write up as an algorithm, or do
> they vary with the recipe? For example, can you just assume "increase
> the amount of water by 15% if above 4kft"? Is it all or nothing, or
> stratisfied, ie. different rules for 0-2kft, 2-4kft, 4-8kft, etc? Is
> there any sort of standard for what constitutes a "high" elevation?
>
> For the most part I never notice differences between printed recipes and
> my results, despite being ~4500 ft. That could just be that I mess the
> recipe up so much that the subtle changes from elevation are lost.
I don't notice either, but then I don't make cakes and don't pay close
attention to things like rise time, bake time, voluminousness, etc that
might make a difference in the bread I bake. Do non-baked goods even
care about altitude, other than taking longer to boil your eggs?
> The two possibilities I see are to include an alternative version, ala
> MIME multi-part email, or to have a note for high altitude variations.
> The latter seems to be how most cookbooks are done and would be most
> familiar to cooks, I think. I would make sure it's a specific section
> rather than just a generic note so that recipe software could filter
> based on "has high-altitude version".
As stated, I'm not an altitude cooking expert, but it seems like the
"high altitude instructions" is the way to go here, because it's usually
something simple like use less this or that and doesn't require
rewriting the whole recipe. Does it need to be a separate field or can
it just be stashed away in the notes or description? That's a question
that our chef friends can help answer: does high altitude stuff matter
enough to have a separate screen/tab/whatever for it in the programs?
Corey Edwards
> Corey Edwards wrote:
> > Conversion between the two is pretty simple, I don't see why we can't
> > allow 212F or 100C. Parsing is easy. Weren't you the free form champion?
>
> that's me :-) 212F or 100C works fine, but what if someone leaves off
> the F or C, or decides to go through the trouble to figure out how to
> type that little degree symbol too, or type 212 deg, etc. Remember my
> free form isn't really free, it's just the illusion of free. Oven temp
> is such a specific bit of information that if you're going to bother
> having it at all you might as well fully define what it means.
I would say that's the software's responsibility. Programs for general
distribution within the US would probably assume F when entered by the
user, but should be required to use units when storing the data in our
format.
Besides, if you try 170F you'll just end up with BBQ and what's wrong
with that? ;)
Corey
Hans Fugal
Precisely.
>
> Besides, if you try 170F you'll just end up with BBQ and what's wrong
> with that? ;)
There's always room for B-B-Q
Joseph Hall
altitude baking. And there are some things that actually do have a
formula, of sorts. For instace, most pastry chefs (at least at high
altitudes) can tell you that the boiling point of water drops about 2
degrees F for every 1,000 ft above sea level. So in Salt Lake (about
4,500), water actually boils at what, 203F? And in Park City, the
boiling point drops even more. But it turns out there's all sorts of
other factors affected by that. Leavening agents such as baking powder
are affected, as are things like sugar. I remember a story I once heard
from pastry chef who moved from San Francisco to Salt Lake, and tried
to bake a massive batch of brownies without taking any of this into
consideration. We'll just say it didn't end well.
I think I would be happy from a programmatical standpoint to at least
include a field for "high altitude considerations". Then the software
can deal with it however it wants, but at least it's there. In fact, I
kind of see it as a flag that I bet a lot of high altitude bakers would
start looking for. The search feature of somebody's software could
include a flag for "high altitude considerations", which would trigger
if that field was filled.