• M137@lemmy.today
    216·
    2 days ago

    You Americans just can’t get away from the corporate brainwashing no matter how hard you try.
    “Hershey’s cocoa powder”, what the fuck? Not only is naming a specific brand for a recipe bad enough, naming the worst shit imaginable is so fucking weird.

    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
      3·
      1 day ago

      Sometimea it is important like when a recipe wants American jiff or skippy peanut butter etc, because it contains icing sugar besides just peanuts; which changes sugar ratios for cookies.

    • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
      5·
      1 day ago

      My guess is that it has to do with the variations from brand to brand and clarifying that this particular recipe used that brand to get the expected taste. Assuming they didn’t enshitify their version with cheaper ingredients.

      Though I hate recipes that say something like “one can” or “one package”. Even without shrinkflation, different brands sometimes use different sizes (if no brand is specified).

      Though if it’s a published recipe, I agree with the other comment saying that money probably exchanged hands, and that deal might even be the only reason that recipe is featured at all, because it was probably a “publish recipes that sell more of our shit” rather than “fit our shit into your recipes where possible”. Guessing the whole thing might have started with “inventory of our cocoa powder is piling up, sales team gets a bonus if they can get it sold (and we’ll lay off the people producing it for a bit)”.

    • piccolo
      61·
      2 days ago

      Perhaps the recipe calls for vomit flavored chocolate that other brands cant match.

  • Bubbaonthebeach@lemmy.caEnglish
    111·
    2 days ago

    It works for very simple recipes where the work can be summed up in a word or two. Complex recipes need far more instructional information not just the order to put ingredients together.

    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
      31·
      1 day ago

      This chart works well as both the requirements and process reference.

      The fine details can be asterisk line items afterward.

      Then the family story goes at the bottom, with perforations so you can tear it off and toss it out

      • ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip
        2·
        1 day ago

        Then the family story goes at the bottom, with perforations so you can tear it off and toss it out

        Stop you gorgeous creature, I don’t want to fall in love with you, I don’t even know you.

  • Juviz@lemmy.zipEnglish
    20·
    2 days ago

    I love this. And to all the guys arguing whether this is a good way of designing a recipe, please remember you are on Lemmy, most people here are either it or engineers or at least very close to one of those professions so the amount of autism is significantly increased 😂

    • chickenf622
      2·
      1 day ago

      Exactly what I was hoping existed already. I think I’m going to try and convert some recipes to this format and see how it goes. I like that it has the ingredients in a simple list, makes shopping so much easier.

  • Kenny2999@lemmy.world
    495·
    3 days ago

    I’m not sure an excel chart is that much better than just saying “melt x, mix y, fold z and then bake” and the list of ingredients xyz.

    • sepiroth154@feddit.nl
      271·
      3 days ago

      Yeah, what if you want to do something like: “Seperate the yolks from the whites, beat the whites until they’re fluffy and then add sugar and mix with the rest.” And then a later step doing something with the yolks. I don’t see how you would do that here without it turning into an unreadable mess.

      • AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        3 days ago

        You could just list egg yolks separately from egg whites in the first place. But yeah I get your point, for certain more complicated recipes it will break down. At the cost of some readability I guess you could list products of earlier ingredients on the side, but then it’s no longer a list of what you need to start.

        I think my ideal solution would just be regular recipes but have them actually list the measurements of things in the text. It’s very annoying to have to go back to the list especially when it’s on the other side of a page.

        Or you could go the other direction and have a full graphical flow chart with some text in it, although I can’t imagine that being particularly space efficient

      • certified_expert@lemmy.world
        2·
        3 days ago

        It is totally possible. This is basically a dependency graph. Separating the yolks simply goes closer to the left, and it produces new ingredients (or data, if you want): yolks and whites. They move right to their own sequential processes.

        • TheSlad
          1·
          3 days ago

          Or you could just list them separately to begin with. “3 egg whites” and “3 egg yolks” on separate rows.

    • dalekcaan@feddit.nl
      11·
      3 days ago

      I feel like this is less useful for a recipe you’re making for the first time or make once in a while, but probably pretty handy as a quick reference for something you make regularly.

    • Racoonwithbenefits@lemmy.zip
      134·
      3 days ago

      But this way you dont have to”instructions”

      You just list ingredients and whats done with them

      Its not for the just-moved-out teenager who is cooking for the first time

      • Rothe@piefed.socialEnglish
        51·
        3 days ago

        But lots of recipes needs instructions to clarify why or how you should use certain techniques or ingredients and the like.

        If it is not for everyone then it is not really an improvement.

    • schnapsman@feddit.orgEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      Maybe it depends on the recipe. I’m all for rethinking them and going for a cleaner design. I’m also looking forward to the day that we migrate away from hillbilly units, so I don’t have to search “xxx recipe metric”.

  • BradleyUffner@lemmy.worldEnglish
    312·
    3 days ago

    I don’t understand what this adds that the “traditional” recipe style is missing. I even see some things it’s lacking. For example, the last 4 ingredients should be mixed together independently before folding in to the base.

    I don’t dislike this format, but I just don’t see why it’s so revolutionary.

    • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
      16·
      3 days ago

      If the last 4 ingredients need mixing together first, then you simply have a mix column with just those ingredient rows under the mix column from above to show that those get mixed independently in parallel. This recipe implies that is unnecessary for this food though.

    • certified_expert@lemmy.world
      11·
      3 days ago

      It clearly shows the sequential and parallel threads of execution:

      • up/down: parallel.
      • left to right: sequential

      It clearly shows the sequence of produced intermediate results, split and merging points:

      • a row that splits into two rows is one step producing more than one result. Like spliting yolk and whites.
      • many rows becoming one: merging node. Like baking many ingredients.
    • Luccus@feddit.org
      7·
      3 days ago

      For example, the last 4 ingredients should be mixed together independently before folding in to the base.

      Isn’t that indicated by the combination of rows?

      I like this chart. It even allows for multithreaded multi-person baking, because the combination of rows indicates where processes are merged (and need to be done).

      Edit: I may be dumb. A mix step is missing below the mix block of the other ingredients, but it could easily be included.

      • Prathas@lemmy.zip
        1·
        3 days ago

        Right, I was about to say that the big near-square in the middle bottom could easily be used to indicate this as a separate process. I really like this format!

  • thatKamGuy
    36·
    3 days ago

    I once came across a cooking blog that used this sort of instructions over a decade ago; was apparently run by an engineer - haven’t found it again since, but the methodology stuck with me.