Throw away your cookbook!

An interesting article on Slate.com

http://www.slate.com/id/2219243/

What do you guys think?

Personally, while the whole "all you need is these magic ratios!" thinking to be a bit too simplistic, it did strike a chord with me. As someone who's just learning, it does feel sometimes that even though I can follow a recipes and create good meal, it hasn't really made me much better as a cook, as I understand it.

Meaning, while I can shop for ingredients and follow instructions, I lack the skill to throw open my pantry, figure out what I have, and throw together a meal out of that. I mean, obviously, beyond the simplistic "ooh, I have pasta and pasta sauce! I'm feeling Italian for dinner tonight!" So when I find myself in this situation, my modus operandi is basically to try to derive these ratios, after a fashion, by looking up recipes with ingredients I have on hand, even if if they're not the same recipes, just trying to figure out how to make them work best together, if that makes any sense. Like, the simplest example, having a recipe you want to make but missing ingredient A (or A + B) and having instead ingredient C on hand. A good cook would probably just know, or at least have a hunch, on how to make the substitution or if it's even possible, but for someone like me, the task would be like staring at a wall!

Maybe having these relationships around for direct easy lookup instead of trawling through tons of recipes to figure them out might make novices a bit quicker on the uptate?

I'm a good cook, and I cook by modifying recipes to fit my own likes/dislikes/allergies and available food.  However, I DO know how to make cookies and cake from scratch and how to make the recipe bigger/smaller by using ratios....but honestly? Anyone who understands math or has a calculator can figure out how to adjust a recipe.

I think we need recipes. For one, recipes help us to learn what herbs and spices go with each other.  Sure, we can (and I do!) experiment, but that's usually because I've got a recipe that uses Thyme and Marjoram, and another that used Marjoram and Sage, so I added the three together or something like that.  I wouldn't instinctively know Thyme and Marjoram went together and I certainly wouldn't want to experiment and potentially ruin an entire dinner!

I like having recipes, even if I do sometimes just use them as a guideline.  I'll keep my cookbooks.

I agree with Becca and mariposa.  Also authentic recipes are also part of a particular culture's heritage; even a particular family's.  It's not always a matter of ratios.  For example, one region in India may favor more of a particular spice than another region, or would use a spice that the other region almost never uses.  Recipes are much more diverse and wonderful than simply the logic of ratios.

Throw away my cookbooks???!?!? Why, my, my, my RETRO cookbooks from the fifties and sixties that have all the cool hand drawn illustrations in them, and the neat pictures? GASP! I often use my recipe books for ideas, mainly, and don't always follow a recipe, unless it's a specific thing. Really, most of the  recipes I follow are for baking. But I LOVE my cookbooks!

I never follow recipes, except maybe if it's the first time I've cooked something and it's something very new or different (and even then I'll rarely follow it to the letter).
Generally, I have a good palette, and often I'll recreate things I've had in restaurants (with good success mainly) or I'll add herbs depending on how I THINK the dish should taste.

I still LOVE recipe books though, mainly for the inspiration, I'll just flick through and see dishes and think "mmm" and I'll create similar dishes with what I have.

I'm also good at creating food from nothing, like yesterday I made stuffed french toast from a quarter of a hard sourdough, an egg, leftover honey/mustard roast ham from yesterday and slices of leerdammer, was great
I've also made french toast from leftover carrot cake and made soup from half a bottle of passata, some chorizo and garlic and herb philadelphia (delish!). I recently made my own harissa from some dried chillies I'd had forever and then made pan roasted harrissa chicken breast with grilled scallions and preserved lemon/courgette cous cous, just from the odds and ends in the fridge.

If you're good at which flavours go together, it gives you the freedom to be really creative with food, but I would never discount classic recipes, or using recipes as inspiration

I think the concept of the book is great but I don't think it would work for a new cook. Recipes are, IMO, the best way to understand what flavors work with each other and get you to the point where you can just open your pantry and throw something fabulous together.

As far as baking goes, it is starts with science and that's where I think a ratio book would be great. If you can get the science, like the article indicates, you can go nuts (so to speak  ) with the creativity.

I'm not going to give up my recipes but I would be interested in reading the book.

It does sound interesting, but don't take my cookbooks away!  DH is far more intuitive in the kitchen than I am.  I make great food, but I'm not the best at throwing together a masterpiece from the contents of nearly-empty cupboards (and he is!).

I'm a good cook, too, and like Becca, I tend to tailor recipes to our tastes, but no way I'd throw away my cookbooks! 

I love cookbooks just for the reading and the pretty pictures.   

I love cookbooks, too, especially the old ones.  I'd kill to have my mom's ancient Good Housekeeping cookbook (circa mid-60s, I think) with me here in the UK.  But I have to say that baking recipes are the only ones I tend to follow strictly--their ratios are more of a science, I think.  You wouldn't just throw bread ingredients together and expect a perfect loaf.  Well, at least I couldn't!  But cooking recipes can be changed/modified to suit individual tastes or ingredients on hand.  Cookbooks give a nice starting-off point.  Long live the cookbook!

I love cookbooks. As others have said, even just flipping through them provides inspiration. Not to mention, having at least one tried and true cookbook (Joy of Cooking or something of the like) is so useful! If someone refers to a dish I haven't heard of, I often look it up in Joy to see what's in it, etc. Also, you can just look up an ingredient in there and find loads of different ways to use it, which often leads to something new. I do sometimes just throw things together, but it usually starts off from somewhere, and of course, personal tastes come into play to evolve a recipe into a more custom-made dish. I'm not a very experienced cook, and I don't really like baking as much, so using recipes as a guideline works best for me and gets my creative juices flowing. (Mary-Kate, you should come by our place and see if we have anything interesting to make French toast with!  )

I love cookbooks for inspiration and guidance too.  I generally start with a recipe, but the more times I make it, the further it deviates from the original.  I do invent some things too, but it's nice to start with something tried and tested as not all inventions are a success!!  I have made some serious messes in my time. 

Hmmm.  This seems to me to be just a variety of cookbook.  If you look at, for example, a Nigella Victoria Sponge cake recipe, she talks about ratios and she suggests alternatives and improvision.

Vicky

I love cookbooks. As others have said, even just flipping through them provides inspiration. Not to mention, having at least one tried and true cookbook (Joy of Cooking or something of the like) is so useful!

My mom sent me a Betty Crocker cookbook while I was visiting Tim because I kept emailing her questions and I found it so helpful, especially as it tells you the proper cooking time for different meats, how long things need to defrost, etc.  It was a huge help!

I'm a good cook, and I cook by modifying recipes to fit my own likes/dislikes/allergies and available food.  However, I DO know how to make cookies and cake from scratch and how to make the recipe bigger/smaller by using ratios....but honestly? Anyone who understands math or has a calculator can figure out how to adjust a recipe.

I think we need recipes. For one, recipes help us to learn what herbs and spices go with each other.  Sure, we can (and I do!) experiment, but that's usually because I've got a recipe that uses Thyme and Marjoram, and another that used Marjoram and Sage, so I added the three together or something like that.  I wouldn't instinctively know Thyme and Marjoram went together and I certainly wouldn't want to experiment and potentially ruin an entire dinner!

Becca, I think you misunderstood the point of the article (I'm kinda wondering if you read it actually.) It doesn't use ratios in relation to recipe reduction. Yeah, thanks, I have enough skill to divide something by 2. You don't need to be a good cook for that -- just graduating from high school is more than enough.

It talks about exactly the thing you address in your second paragraph: that on the whole, it is less useful to know lots of recipes and more useful to just understand how various ingredients work together. I don't understand your reply at all because it basically backs the argument raised by the author of Ratios except you say you oppose it. Did you misunderstand what he was trying to say or something?

That is why I said in my original post that I thought his point was a bit extreme (but it'd have to be -- he's selling books!) but that understanding the underlying relationship between ingredients will make you a better cook faster than just rote following of recipes. When you know and memorize tons of recipes, you can't help but sorta start getting a feeling for what kind of ratios of what kind of ingredients make what kinds of foods, but if you know the ratios earlier, maybe you get that comfort with the pantry much sooner. You get comfortable adapting and experimenting much earlier on in the process.

I wonder if I'm making myself clear, but the vehemence of the responses makes me think not. My point is would it make one a better cook faster to supplement the practicum of cooking from recipes with theory of ratios.