This column is about cooking. The aspirin part is just a little lead in. There was a television commercial that had the line in it, “All Aspirin is alike.” A group of chemistry students got into an argument about this. We argued about the formula for acetylsalicylic acid and whether the same formula meant that all aspirin was alike or could some aspirin be better than others. Finally we agreed that the formula for this wonderful miracle drug might the same, the formula could be like a recipe. A recipe for a dish could be the same but different cooks had varying results cooking the same recipe.
The brain trust got together the other day and took up the recipe argument and how the same recipe could have wildly different results. Recipes can have some tricks hidden in the directions. Not all people have the same interpretation of a recipe. That’s when the wild tales began.
On guy told about his first wife. She was a beauty queen. Most of her time was spent on going to pageants and looking pretty. She didn’t spend much time with learning about cooking. She was pretty though. Their first Thanksgiving revealed her weakness in cooking and her understanding of recipes. She had fixed a big plate of dressing for their dinner of Turkey and dressing. On top of the dressing was an egg. “What is the egg for?” “The recipe says add one egg.” That was his first wife.
Some recipes are easy. “ Add one box of cake mix, one cup of flour, one tablespoon of baking soda, and one can of pineapple, mix by hand. “ One guy said he started cooking that cake but after a few times he quit making it. It was just too messy. Instead of putting the ingredients in a bowl and using a mixer or a spoon, he used his hands to mix the ingredients. It is hard to know what you don’t know.
Baking bread can be a challenge also. I had some friends that liked to bake different kinds of bread. Some of this specialty bread was kneaded by hand. Once they messed up the recipe and ended up with hands coated with dough that wouldn’t come off. I call to a neighbor came up with a novel idea to remove the dough. “Go out back and rub your hands on the oak tree until the dough comes off.” The oak tree worked but that was the last time for that kind of bread.
I tried helping my dad fix some bread one time. I got some kind of bowl full of flour and no telling what else mixed into some kind of god-awful mess. It would pour, wouldn’t mix, and it didn’t taste good. I was crying and trying to get this bowl of bread dough to do something. My dad told me that I had only wasted about a nickel’s worth of flour. If that were the worst thing I did in life it would be no problem.
I still think of my dad when I see a nickel and realize that no matter what the recipe is, some other factors make food taste different. The cook has a lot to do with any dish. Also, some of these sneaky cooks change the recipe and add some extra little something. They don’t tell that in the recipe though.
