Isn't this how recipes - outside of friends and family - have worked forever?
Celebrity chefs are the minority. People normally just Google "air fryer fried okra" and click on one of the first three.
A meandering SEO tale doesn't prove this person cook, it proves they know how to game Google.
Looking back at some of the gelatin casseroles of the 60s, of course, casts doubt on some of that reliability.
You're making my point - they were gatekeepers because they were discoverable and promoted. That's what gave them credibility. Just as showing in search results does now.
People didn't pick cookbooks because they had the most aimless stories that hid the actual recipe.
If you run the magazine Food & Wine and you just publish random recipes that you found for free in church-ladies' xeroxed recipe pamphlet, you're going to lose your readership pretty fast.
Of course, some magazines applied more standards than others, and so that's when the reader learns to trust the recipe in Food & Wine (or whatever, I'm not recommending them) over Reader's Digest.
a) tell if it looks like something you'd enjoy
b) tell if it turned out right after it's done.
None of the recipes on this site have any pictures, which I think will hold it back.
The most convincing theory I heard was that the gelatin obsession was about status since it required refrigeration. Hosting a party where you served the latest, most elaborate gelatin dish said something about you.
It's not that recipes with meandering SEO tales necessarily have better recipes. It's that recipes without any explanation usually suck. If you pick something with a meandering SEO tale, it _might_ not be terrible. Possibly not terrible is better than definitely terrible.
I'd argue that recipes themselves are why a lot of people's cooking sucks. The recipes tell you what how much and how long but fail to account for the basics of seasoning, preparation and tool selection.
If people apply a formal or acquired training to recipes they'd usually vary a lot from person to person much less the original recipe
Recipes are easy to find, especially now with the internet.
It does have a section on recipes, but a solid half or more of the book is on technique, why certain ways work and others don’t, etc.
Lots of stuff that I imagine one would pick up by working in a kitchen or going to school for it, but could take a long time to figure out on your own.
0: https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Fat-Acid-Heat-Mastering/dp/14767...
[0] (Of course you don't have to read and quote books, and a lot of good chefs didn't as well, but that is just one factor for me to decide how much experience you have/how trustworthy you are. Just showing some recipes don't tell me that much.)
1. Jump to recipe link right at the top (almost all recipe sites I regularly use have this).
2. Ingredients are described with extra hints or reasons for using them
3. Equipment used
4. Tips for the recipe, sometimes possible substitutes
5. Storage tips
No annoying background, just a short intro and pictures for the basics and otherwise helpful text.
[0]: https://mouthwateringmotivation.com/2021/03/08/no-bake-keto-...
Besides, people looking for recipes are getting something of real value, sometimes hard won. That is hard to know, unless all that is shared too.
I play it like you do. The better sites offer context and serve up whatever AD helps them pay their way. Totally equitable.
One can always start really learning to cook too. Reasonable food is not too tough and being able to spiff up a recipe or substitute is the reward.
Great food is harder. I am getting there myself and I have a two generation body of recpies and notes to draw on.
My grannie was very sharp. Approached cooking like she did many things. She often had real mastery of stuff she wanted to do or was interested in. Similar values were present in my wife's side of the fam. A couple of those are over 100 years old! (Brought over on a boat from Europe)
In those books are notes, context, other info. Those are where the great was noted down, passed down.
That experience has given me a perspective on all this. People who share are doing something pretty damn high value.
It should be appreciated, funded, etc.
And no, our family books are getting scanned, but are not going online just yet. The women consider it personal.
I suppose it is.
It is also the food that brings people home every year too. I grok that.
Maybe the better people can end up on substack. Deliver the good recipes and context needed for people to get the great in them.
I may subscribe. Pretty sure my wife would, if it were someone she values somehow.
To me, being unable to be bothered some means maybe also not being all the concerned about the food.
Self correcting, IMHO.
When deciding between competing recipes I want the ingredient list and a pic of the final product to decide.
I don't want to have to browse and search through the clutter of irrelevant things. I like Punchfork[1] for this. Easy to search, it presents the ingredient list and a pic then you can click through to the site for the instructions --unfortunately the actual sites are usually cluttered with few exceptions.
That said, we are in the minority. Most people just Google the recipe they want to make and use the first result. This very very very rarely produces a good result. Most people don't care. And yet they wonder why their food sucks.
There's definitely some skill to cooking, but 80% of why I'm considering a good cook among my friends is because I only use recipes from people I trust, and I try to follow them as closely as possible.
I strongly agree with this. I consider myself a fairly accomplished cook, I've been cooking since I was tall enough to see over the table, but one of the big things that helps is that I will take the time to find the right recipe, mostly by looking at the recipe itself and being able to visualize and taste the food before I make it, but also but reading what the author writes and deciding if I trust them.
It depends on your skill level / experience. Some people have a knack for cooking and just need a rough list of ingredients to figure out a dish.
Some people need detailed instructions and rely more on recipes. I don't have any idea how to season things apart from a liberal use of buillon cubes, so my best dishes are when I closely follow recipe instructions from good cookbooks.
Check out Salt Fat Acid Heat [0] if you haven’t seen it. It totally changed my idea of how to season things, to the point that I feel a lot more confident modifying existing recipes now.
One of the most eye opening things also sounds the most silly in retrospect: taste as you go. It makes such a huge difference! For whatever reason, I would always blindly follow a recipe until the very end, and hope that the “big reveal” turned out how I hoped. Now, I try to taste as I go (add a little salt; try it; add more). A related tip that blew my mind recently: if you’re making meatballs and want to check the seasoning, cook a tiny chunk of it and taste it before committing to a whole batch.
Anyway, I really like that book :D
0: https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Fat-Acid-Heat-Mastering/dp/14767...
And more importantly, lots of people really _think_ they fall into a category where they don't need recipes to "cook well". In reality, they started off following shitty recipes, and so now their "expertise" is built on shoddy foundations.
https://www.theguardian.com/food/series/how-to-cook-the-perf...
Recipe website de-cruft-ifier
The sites that keep me are the ones that don't blather on about grandmas but do subtly give me some reason for why I should trust them, they explain that this technique makes the most sense, they describe how they've tweaked it from this cookbook or whatever. I also read the comments. In the end, though, my pre-existing trust of the site and author makes the most difference.