Posted on 10/30/2023 6:05:28 AM PDT by texas booster
Everyone I knew growing up always used the cookie recipe off the back of the chocolate chips.
Back of the box (or jar) recipes are usually very reliable.
The food mfg wants you to keep buying the product so they go all out
to come up with delicious recipes you’ll want to make again and again.
I confess to using the chocolate chip cookie recipe on the bag of the irreplaceable chocolate chips.
Although I do add my own touches depending on what’s in my kitchen cupboard.
My little sister was the only person I ever knew who made the Mock Apple Pie recipe off the Ritz cracker box. It was horrible.
I forgot to mention YEAST to make the lahmajoon dough.
My mom used a typical package of Fleischmann’s® yeast.
I use a generous teaspoon of bulk yeast.
The propagation of recipes has been around a very long time. There are even YouTube channels of old recipes, some dating back to the 17th Century, and likely earlier. Recently, I saw an 18th Century one for Butter simmered chicken, that is a whole chicken immersed in a LOT of butter. Called “Fowl or Chicken the Dutch Way.”
Schools used to teach Home Economics to girls, with ‘shop’ to boys. A big part of Home Ec was cooking. It was seen as a big plus on the track to become a housewife.
Cooking in the US came in waves. But recipe propagation was slower due to lack of published material. To have a cookbook was precious, and they came with many blank pages to fill in with recipes from others.
A huge splash came with the book “Joy of Cooking”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Joy_Of_Cooking
It was full of recipes, with commentary, during the Great Depression. Then a major revision came with WWII, with modifications for rationing, shortages, and substitutions.
Food manufacturers published recipes and held contests to find more recipes. Even the largest US grocery store chain in the US, held a nationwide contest for a “better chicken”, resulting in the standard chicken we see today. Though it is less flavorsome than ‘heritage chickens’ you can still find.
The 1950s and 1960s were full of exotic new ingredients and foreign recipes. But cooking has suffered with the loss of many women, due to “women’s liberation” and feminism.
Its so long that I do not know what my mother used. I know that she did use product recipes all the time though. We have a number of her recipes in a card box so I guess that makes them family recipes.
Cookies? Myself? I like oatmeal raisin cookies, with or without walnuts. (And of course Carrot Cake with cream cheese frosting because its “healthy”!)
Well, then, what is it?
It's not like I would ever tell anyone ... or make an apple pie with said secret ...
I have my mother’s old, stained hard-cover, notebook-type Betty Crocker cookbook I believe from the late 50s - with her hand-written side notes, etc.
Still make the pumpkin chiffon pie for Thanksgiving (family just requested it) - and the blue cheese salad dressing my father loved.
Still holds up after all these years. My daughter is into “new-wave” cooking with odd ingredients and trendy flavors. I (and the rest of my family) find most of it inedible...
There’s a reason people still have those old Betty Crocker cookbooks....and still use them.
Lol
I miss my mother’s potato salad. She taught me how to make it as a kid going for the cooking merit badge in the Boy Scouts. That recipe is long gone.
The good news is...I brought home a container of “Potato Salad-Southern Style” from Sam’s...and it could’ve been made by Mom. Exact same thing...taste and consistency. Now I have to restrain myself from overbuying the stuff.
Mama was a good cook.
My sister and I have realized that her famous such and such were all lifted straight from the Betty Crocker cookbook, 50s edition.
She knew how to cook, farmers daughter of 14, she grew up around farm crews and a lot of hearty meals that the girls and grandma would put together. Pretty big operation during the good weather months.
When she went to work it was always at school kitchens.
My very best friend for years had us to dinner. She served Arroz con pollo, I have never tasted anything so exotic and delicious. I asked her for the recipe which she said “no”. It was her mothers who was a pre-Castro Cuban, handed down for several generations and top secret. Six months later, after permission from the family she surprised me with the recipe, with my vow to NEVER give it to another soul.
I make pie crusts from scratch. The apple pie recipe is on the back of the tapioca box. I’m not adverse to opening 3 cans of pie filling either.
I make a mean faux apple pie substituting zucchini for apples. Tastes good too.
The Mrs uses quite a few from a Betty Crocker book herself. I’ve made a few things from the web site myself. Just plain, good cooking.
I often find that “secret family recipes” aren’t all that great and I often prefer the ones from a mayonnaise jar or somewhere else readily available. A lot of these places have test kitchens and they’ve practiced and perfected the recipes after many, many trials.
My mother and aunts made some fantastic dishes, but I don’t know where they got the recipes.
I also have a Betty Crocker three ring binder cookbook from 1964…. still holding up. I have a much more recent paperback which is falling apart. Lots of different methods. The early one, for example, makes cookies by hand and the later one uses a mixer.
There was a restaurant owner who wanted his mother’s potato salad recipe but the problem was everybody hated it.
My assistant kitchen manager came up with a brilliant plan - we made the mother’s recipe and kept a small container of it handy. But what we made in bulk and served was delicious and raved about.
When the owner came in for a visit we’d switch out - his security came in first so we knew he was coming. He’d make a beeline for the potato salad to check. Problem solved.
BOOKMARK
Growing up, we had A&P grocery stores in our town. My grandmother would buy Spanish Bar cake, which I loved. Years ago, I made Musselman apple butter recipe for apple butter cake, and it tasted exactly like that Spanish Bar cake, minus the raisins. The recipe is on musselman’s website, if anyone wants it.
As far as potato salad goes, there seems to be a wide variety of recipes. I’m praised for my potato salad wherever I take it; I never actually had a written recipe, though a friend told me how she made hers, so I tried to imitate hers, and it came out great. I recently watched a YouTube video for 100 year old recipe for NYC deli potato salad. I couldn’t believe that anyone would eat it the way it was made; nothing in it but potatoes, grated onion, salt, sugar, and mayonnaise mixed with water and vinegar. Yuk. But apparently, it was a popular item. But then, I’ve eaten food cooked by people who obviously couldn’t cook, and their families, who apparently didn’t know any better, thought it was good. There’s no accounting for other people’s taste.
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