A great article I found at The Seattle Times here.
Basic cooking terms that have been part of kitchen vocabulary for centuries are now considered incomprehensible to the majority of Americans.
As a result:
…food companies are dumbing down recipes, and cookbooks are published with simple instructions and lots of step-by-step illustrations.
“Thirty years ago, a recipe would say, ‘Add two eggs,’ ” said Bonnie Slotnick, a longtime cookbook editor and owner of a rare-cookbook shop in New York’s Greenwich Village.
“In the ’80s, that was changed to ‘beat two eggs until lightly mixed.’ By the ’90s, you had to write, ‘In a small bowl, using a fork, beat two eggs,’ ” she said. “We joke that the next step will be, ‘Using your right hand, pick up a fork and … .”
and here’s the proof:
At a conference in December, Stephen Sanger, chairman and chief executive of General Mills, noted the sad state of culinary affairs and described e-mail and calls the company gets asking for cooking advice.
There was the person who didn’t have any eggs for baking and asked if a peach would do instead. One man railed about the fire that resulted when he followed instructions to grease the bottom of the pan — and slathered the pan’s outside.
Are you fricking kidding me? Wow. Maybe I was just raised in an unusual house where my parents both cooked and showed my brother and I how to do the same. While I do admit, my Dad’s dessert baking skills are highly above average.. Fallen Chocolate Torte with fresh Raspberry sauce and creme Anglaise anyone?
My brother is now a total food snob and a cook at a 5 star restaurant in Boston, which is isnt the norm. But although I do make a fantastic fruit tart, I’m not a chef or a culinary student and I never took Home Ec and I still would never need to google the term “saute”.
(sigh) Craziness.
Come on non-cooking America! You’re making the the rest of us look bad!
And you call Seth a food snob.
Haha. No, i just think people should know how to use kitchen appliances other than their microwave.
Sorry, but guess what I made for dessert last night? Flourless dark chocolate torte with creme anglais….I know…it seems so…pedestrian.
By the way, I love the new “look and feel” of the blog!