don't turn your brain off when you read recipes

critical reading for recipes, with a worked example

Recipes may seem like finished works of Platonic perfection, but this is simply not so. Like a film, a computer program, or the blueprint for a building, a recipe is the result of responding to a bunch trade-offs. The author would like it if you got a good result by following it, but they’re also thinking about what equipment, ingredients and techniques are accessible to their audience. I want you to think about those trade-offs.

a finished work of platonic perfection

The way people write recipes can make it hard to discern what’s really happening. There might be one or two big ideas that animate the recipe, but the convention is that all steps are written out in order, in a dispassionate monotone. Recipes are written as if they will be followed robotically, obscuring the truth that two squishy brains are in conversation.

last year for my birthday my grandma gave me a handwritten notebook of her recipes. in this way she touched her squishy brain to mine

Whenever you see a recipe, imagine the writer making the dish many times, with big and small variations. They made a sequence of decisions, first when cooking, later when writing. Did they write down the best-tasting version? The one that works most reliably? Did they judge that you probably don’t have a blowtorch, or whole cumin seeds, and therefore wrote cumin powder and broiling? If you do have whole cumin seeds, could you make it easier or faster or yummier?

Here’s an example. This recipe for Aloo Gobi was recently featured in the New York Times. It’s a really good recipe that’s written well and makes reasonable choices. It picks a fine point in the space of all possible Aloo Gobi recipes. It’s pretty traditional, yet there are little tells that it was written for an American audience: serrano or Thai bird’s eye peppers, Yukon gold potatoes, calling the herb “cilantro” instead of “coriander”, Kosher salt, the specific brand Diamond Crystal.

See how the recipe uses whole spices, aromatics, powdered spices, salt and acid. Note how it uses garam masala at the end as well as during the cooking. See if you can categorize each step in the recipe. (I’ll show you my analysis a little later in this post.) To use a computer analogy, try decompiling or disassembling the recipe into a higher-level language that expresses the same procedure in fewer words. To use an architecture analogy, see if you can recover the blueprint by looking at the building.

some programs, like games or EDA software, are deliberately obfuscated to prevent their decompilation in order to protect their IP. imagine if gargoyles and rococo ornamentation were the architectural equivalent.

Given the list of ingredients, do you feel like you could write the recipe? In other words, is there an obvious way to treat these ingredients?

Did any of the instructions surprise you?

Do any of the quantities surprise you?

Why do they treat the potato and the cauliflower the way they do?

Where’s the acid coming from?

What would you do differently, if anything?

If you’re from a family that frequently makes Aloo Gobi, how does that version differ from this one?

If you’ve made Indian food at least a few times, now’s a good time to pause, read the recipe, and think about the questions above.

here’s my reaction video in text form, just imagine my face and voice as you read the following

Inherent in Aloo Gobi is a problem: both potatoes and cauliflower become unpleasantly mushy when overcooked, but the two take different amounts of time to cook. There are many classic solutions to this problem. Here, they’re cooked separately but not to completion, before the flavorful onion-and-spice masala is started. The starring ingredients are then returned to the masala, and all three finish cooking together.

This is conceptually elegant and easier to execute than the most common way I’ve seen Aloo Gobi written: adding things at just the right time so they all finish perfectly together. It’s a very reasonable choice when writing for a wide readership that includes many cooking noobs.

My only criticism is that it maybe doesn’t explain this intent clearly enough? Many noobs won’t understand that the vegetables must not be fully cooked after step 1. Timing is just not as reliable as you might think, because there’s so much variation in the produce, burners, pan shape, pan material, humidity, and of course the cook’s ability to cut vegetables to a consistent size. How many people are actually cutting 1-inch florets? It’s better to explain “the vegetables should be kinda raw at this point, because we’ll finish cooking them together with the masala in step 3”. People are smart! They’re good at figuring out the little adjustments and probings they’ll need to do in order to achieve that goal. I respect my readers’ intelligence so I’d rather tell them why we’re doing what we’re doing instead of “1-inch florets, 5 minutes”.

Another important benefit of doing it this way is that both main ingredients can get a little bit of browning from being sautéed in hot oil at temperatures above the boiling point of water.

Whole cumin seeds are tempered. The pan has oil at this point from step 1, so “toast” is not how I’d describe what’s happening. The seeds are prevented from burning by dumping in an entire onion (the green chili is irrelevant for the purpose of stopping cumin from burning, because there’s simply not enough of it to matter).

Cumin seeds, onion, garlic, ginger and green chili are a classic combination in North Indian and, specifically, Punjabi cooking. If I see those ingredients, there’s a very high probability that they will be used in the way described in step 2 of this recipe. It is not very important that the green chili goes in before the garlic and ginger. I would simplify things and just add those latter three together.

Now that there’s a considerable amount of bulk material in the pan, it’s safe to add powdered spices without risking burning. I would reorder things as follows: tomatoes, then all the powdered spices including turmeric, stir them in, then add the potatoes and cauliflower. This way, the spices can disperse evenly into the onion-and-tomato masala and then cover the two main ingredients. The cauliflower and potatoes are both a little delicate, and stirring them will break off bits. I think that’s fine and actually desirable — it contributes to a soft, creamy texture — but I’d want to control the amount of bits that break off rather than having my hand forced by the need to disperse the powdered spices evenly.

I also think “3 tablespoons” of water is false precision. The true process for adding water here is the parenthetical in the last sentence. How much water is released, and how quickly it evaporates, is so highly variable that prescribing a precise number of tablespoons risks misleading the noob. It would be better to just say that it’s impossible to be precise, and you’ll need to use your brain and your eyes to monitor the moisture level.

Seasoning and garnishing: salt, acid and cilantro. The acid here is amchur: powdered dried unripe mango. The ingredients list gives a precise quantity for the amchur but not for the salt. Many cooks will adjust the amount of acid to taste just like they will for salt. This recipe also gets acid from the tomatoes, and tomatoes vary wildly in how acidic they are, so even if you use exactly the written amounts of all the ingredients you’re not going to get the same result the author did. Just season the acid to taste.

the decompiled version

Step 1: sauté potatoes and cauliflower separately until partially cooked.

Step 2: temper cumin seeds, arrest with aromatics.

Step 3: add tomatoes and powdered spices, return starring ingredients. cook until done.

Step 4: season and garnish.