The Art of Measuring Recipes: SUMMING UP

A recipe is an abbreviated way of communicating the necessary information for making a dish. A standardized recipe is one written for use in a given operation specifying exactly how a given dish is made in that operation. The standardized recipe has many roles. It helps the cook to maintain consistency of product. It provides the data for cost analysis; thus helping to control costs and assures profitability. It provides essential data for purchasing and planning for future needs.

A standardized recipe applies to one operation only; it is not a universal important to making a given dish anywhere, any time, by anybody. Many uncontrollable variables complicate the picture: differences in equipment, differences in cooks, differences in products, differences in temperature, differences in understanding and communication. A written recipe cannot substitute for understanding the structure of a dish, the roles and relationships of its ingredients, and what is supposed to happen in the making.

In order to understand and follow recipes, you must know how ingredients are measured, the various quantity measures and their equivalents, and how to convert one yield to another. You should also be familiar with the two systems of measuring temperature and know how to convert from one to the other.

This series is basic to your understanding of everything that comes after. From here on you will be reading recipes—analyzing them, converting them, using them most of all in understanding what takes place when you put a group of ingredients together and cook them in a certain way. Learn to make recipes your tools, not your masters. Learn measures and equivalents; they too are indispensable kitchen tools.

Come back and reread this series after you have engaged in battle with some recipes in the kitchen, and you will discover new insights.

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