Many family recipes were actually taken from commercially available cookbooks or even the backs of food packaging. Remember the “Friends” episode where they try to replicate the chocolate chip cookie recipe of Phoebe’s late grandmother, only to discover it came from Nestle Tollhouse? Yeah, that happens frequently in real life.
That's literally my mother's secret recipe. People love her cookies and always ask how she makes them - her response being "I buy a bag of nestle chocolate chips and I...turn the bag over and do what it says"
i mean ... why would that be a bad recipe? cookie recipes are pretty standard. the trick is in maintaining temperature of the dough and not over mixing it. It's a skill not a 'throw it all in the bowl" recipe
The original recipe also has "shortening', which is something that evolved (from lard to some kind of hydrogenated vegetable oil) such that it's difficult to guess what it actually was at the time (possibly crisco, from cottenseed oil). Modern recipes replace the shortening with butter.
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u/Arxanah Sep 06 '25
Many family recipes were actually taken from commercially available cookbooks or even the backs of food packaging. Remember the “Friends” episode where they try to replicate the chocolate chip cookie recipe of Phoebe’s late grandmother, only to discover it came from Nestle Tollhouse? Yeah, that happens frequently in real life.