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The Art of Measuring Recipes: Ratios and Proportions 1

© Andrew A. Orr

These relationships are all present in the original recipe, but because of the grocery-list effect, they do not become visible. When you group the ingredients according to function, you see specific quantity relationships that give you a handle overall recipe. It is the proportions of ingredients to one another that make the dish what it is. If you lost the recipe but remembered these proportions you could still make cream of cauliflower soup.

This is the way many professionals approach their cooking. They think of ingredients in-groups according to their functions and memorize the basic proportions. They refer to the recipe card for quantifies and yields and the special variations practiced by the kitchen where they work.

A recipe is what you make of it. As you study cooking, much of your success will depend on how you are able to use a recipe. If you follow it blindly systematically without understanding, you will be a slave to it. If you see it as a blueprint for the construction of a dish, it can open doors for you. When you understand its pattern, learn its basic proportions, and master the techniques required, you can make the dish in any quantity with or without a recipe. You can also apply the pattern and proportions to similar products. Thousands and thousands of recipes are really variations of a few basic patterns. It makes the whole world of cooking very simple.

After you have been cooking for a while with this functional recipe format, you will begin to be able to turn anybody's recipe around and rearrange its ingredients according to their function in the dish. Then, although you have never seen the dish, you will be able to analyze what kind of product it is and what is supposed to happen in the making. You can then make a good product even from a poorly written recipe.

However, these open doors are a long way down the road. Let us go back to some basic information you must master before you travel that road.

Recipes may communicate quantities of ingredients in three different ways: by number (count), by volume, and by weight. These methods of communication represent three different systems of measurement. Number is measured by counting items. Volume is measured in utensils of the necessary sizes. Weight is measured with scales. Our soup recipe in Figure 5-1 uses all three systems.

FIGURE 5-1

CREAM OF CAULIFLOWER SOUP

Yield: 20 6 ounce servings