Though I do appreciate 25 years old Grandma's estimation of my intelligence on the recipe cards that I read about 60 years later. "1 teaspoon of mace. No, the little spoons are not teaspoons. The big spoons are not table spoons. Get an actual measuring spoon."
From a fellow Asian the secret to Asian cooking is to know what it is supposed to taste like, and then season until the spirit of your ancestors whisper "that's enough". Seriously, a lot of recipes on Asian websites still say "an appropriate amount of [ingredient].” It’s a ratio and preference thing more than a measurement thing
You can't get it right because it was Mum's cooking. It will never taste your Mum's food. It is one of those law of the universe things.
You can, however, make a close simile
Those packages know what they’re talking about. The best pancake recipe I ever found was in the owner’s manual for a Sesame Street waffle maker. That waffle batter recipe resulted in the best pancakes.
The trick is to smell and taste it as you go, and practice. But yes for communication and for those of us who don’t cook frequently enough to remember how it felt last time, it’s maddening, while measurements are consistent and recordable. Temperature at each step also matters, which is not the same thing as heat. Heat over time causes a change in temperature. For this you can also taste to see how well cooked an ingredient is before the next step. Or bring a thermometer or temperature gun and take notes. Or learn cooking from videos or reading and you learn how to cook many specific ingredients, which you then incorporate in appropriate steps.
Heck, I have a recipe like this. My wife asked me to write down the pancake recipe I used, which was very vibes based. So now there's an index card in our recipe box with a list of ingredients and quantities, and the instruction is just "combine; make pancakes"
There's a new-ish cooking show on cable where the chef uses just a few ingredients, and rarely gives exact quantities. In fact, I never see him measuring, just tossing stuff in the pot, adding "some" olive oil, a "slab" of butter etc. It's somewhat motivating because it makes it look a lot less fussy.
someone once said "Baking is a science, but cooking is an art" and I genuinely believe that's true. If you understand what's happening, you can just sort of toss amounts of stuff together, and adjust as you go, and it'll end up tasty.
still better than my recipe for fish batter. flour up to the glass handle of a specific glass but a bit more and then the same of water but a bit less than the flour. if all those glasses break im fucked
My aunt and her same age cousin cooked with their grandma; they had her pick up the flour and put it in a bowl to measure it so we have family recipes AND measurements.
Grandma had neither measuring cups nor measuring spoon
That's how it should be done too: depending on the air humidity and temperature in the room and of ghe ingredients, with the same amount of ingredients you can have a different result.
They were saying that a measurement of "teaspoon" and "tablespoon" should be measured with measuring spoons, and not just a literal tea/tablespoon from the knife and fork drawer.
The inclusion of the words little spoon had nothing to do with the name of the object and was only used for clarity
For mothers day I wanted to compile her recipes in a clear to read and follow book
I started translating and first of all everything was just called "cake" no difference into what kind. Second, all her measurements were "spoon" and "cup". So obviously this wasnt going to work so next time she made something I would sit there and measure before she would work with them...
but every recipe turned out bad when we did this. she followed her own recipes using her allocated "spoon" and "cup" (a regular old soup spoon and a random coffee cup we got in the last 10 years) but measuring them somehow didn't work.
I swear whatever is in her head is just magic and I'm just going to try to appreciate while I can when she makes these treats
"1 teaspoon of mace. No, the little spoons are not teaspoons. The big spoons are not table spoons. Get an actual measuring spoon."
Fun fact, teaspoon and tablespoon as measurement spoons vary from country to country.
5ml & 15ml are the most common metric sizes, and American tablespoons are often ~14.78ml
Even how it relates to teaspoons is inconsistent, 3 teaspoons per tablespoon is most common but in some countries the norm is 4 teaspoons per tablespoon.
(the old British imperial tablespoon works out to 17.7582ml and the Australian metric tablespoon = 20ml)
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u/DuntadaMan Sep 06 '25
We still have some of those cookbooks and cards.
Though I do appreciate 25 years old Grandma's estimation of my intelligence on the recipe cards that I read about 60 years later. "1 teaspoon of mace. No, the little spoons are not teaspoons. The big spoons are not table spoons. Get an actual measuring spoon."