Decent shift in favor of the pareto principle applying to cooking.
This one is more about saliency than about changing my beliefs, but let’s roll with it anyway.
I cooked tomato sauce last night and it came out great. But I took a very not-fancy approach to it. I just sauteed a bunch of garlic in olive oil and butter, added some red pepper flakes, dumped in three cans of tomato puree, and let it simmer for about five or six hours.
Previously I’ve messed around with Serious Eats’ much more complicated version. It includes adding fish sauce, tomato paste, chopped onions and carrots, whole onions and carrots while simmering, using an oven instead of the stove top, red wine, basil, oregano, and whatever else. After messing around with different versions of all that it seems to me that along the lines of the pareto principle, there are a few things that are responsible for the large majority of taste differences: 1) how long you simmer it for, 2) how much fat you use, and 3) how much acid you use. Everything else seems like it only has a marginal impact. And last night I felt like I got those variables just right (actually it could have used a little more acidity but I didn’t have any red wine).
But this goes against the message I feel like I receive a lot in the culinary world that all these little things are important. I guess the message I’m trying to point at is like an anti-pareto principle. Which sounds like I’m strawmanning, but I don’t think I am.
Anyway, I guess I’ve always been a “culinary pareto” person rather than a “culinary anti-pareto” person, but something about last night just made it feel very salient to me. And I think this shift in saliency also serves the function of shifting my beliefs in practice.
Since COVID-19 I am cooking at home a lot, and I would say that most details don’t matter (either the difference is difficult to notice, or the difference is negligible). Even cooking a soup 30 minutes longer (I got distracted and forgot I was cooking) made no big difference.
Exceptions: burning food; adding too much salt or acid.
Possible explanation is that some people are more sensitive about the taste, and those may be the ones that add the tiny details in recipes. They may be overrepresented among professional cooks.
Before I got some experience and self-confidence, I was often scared by too many details in the recipes. These days I mostly perceive the recipe as a “binary code” and try to see the “source code” behind it. The source code is like “cook A and B together, optionally add C or D”, with some implied rules like “always use E with A, unless specifically told otherwise”. The amounts officially specified with two significant digits usually don’t have to be taken too precisely; plus or minus 20% is often perfectly okay. Sometimes a details actually matters… you will find out by experimenting; then you can underline that part of the recipe.
I would like to see a Pareto cookbook. (“Potato soup: Peel and cut a few potatoes, cook in water for 10-30 minutes, add 1⁄4 teaspoon of salt. Expert version: while cooking add some bay leaves and a little fat.”) So that one could start with the simple version, and optionally add the less important details later.
These days I mostly perceive the recipe as a “binary code” and try to see the “source code” behind it.
Wow, that’s an awesome analogy!
I would like to see a Pareto cookbook.
I was thinking the same thing. I spend way too much time watching cooking videos on YouTube, and so if there was something like that out there I feel like there’s a good chance I would have stumbled across it at this point. Although I’d say Adam Ragusea is reasonably close.
+1 there are some entries in this genre but I’ve found them to be low quality and still aimed at a dramatically higher level of effort:results ratios because of the selection effect on the sort of person who would write a cook book and take lots of actions for granted. I want recipes by Musashi. If you make an extra movement you’ll lose your arm in a sword fight.
Frozen peas are a pretty big staple for me as well. I find them to be a bit inconsistent though. At best they’re sweet and kinda juicy, but at worst they don’t have that sweetness and are sorta mealy. Any tips?
I’ve never been able to eat frozen carrots because of the texture. Do you like them or just put up with them?
Decent shift in favor of the pareto principle applying to cooking.
This one is more about saliency than about changing my beliefs, but let’s roll with it anyway.
I cooked tomato sauce last night and it came out great. But I took a very not-fancy approach to it. I just sauteed a bunch of garlic in olive oil and butter, added some red pepper flakes, dumped in three cans of tomato puree, and let it simmer for about five or six hours.
Previously I’ve messed around with Serious Eats’ much more complicated version. It includes adding fish sauce, tomato paste, chopped onions and carrots, whole onions and carrots while simmering, using an oven instead of the stove top, red wine, basil, oregano, and whatever else. After messing around with different versions of all that it seems to me that along the lines of the pareto principle, there are a few things that are responsible for the large majority of taste differences: 1) how long you simmer it for, 2) how much fat you use, and 3) how much acid you use. Everything else seems like it only has a marginal impact. And last night I felt like I got those variables just right (actually it could have used a little more acidity but I didn’t have any red wine).
But this goes against the message I feel like I receive a lot in the culinary world that all these little things are important. I guess the message I’m trying to point at is like an anti-pareto principle. Which sounds like I’m strawmanning, but I don’t think I am.
Anyway, I guess I’ve always been a “culinary pareto” person rather than a “culinary anti-pareto” person, but something about last night just made it feel very salient to me. And I think this shift in saliency also serves the function of shifting my beliefs in practice.
Since COVID-19 I am cooking at home a lot, and I would say that most details don’t matter (either the difference is difficult to notice, or the difference is negligible). Even cooking a soup 30 minutes longer (I got distracted and forgot I was cooking) made no big difference.
Exceptions: burning food; adding too much salt or acid.
Possible explanation is that some people are more sensitive about the taste, and those may be the ones that add the tiny details in recipes. They may be overrepresented among professional cooks.
Before I got some experience and self-confidence, I was often scared by too many details in the recipes. These days I mostly perceive the recipe as a “binary code” and try to see the “source code” behind it. The source code is like “cook A and B together, optionally add C or D”, with some implied rules like “always use E with A, unless specifically told otherwise”. The amounts officially specified with two significant digits usually don’t have to be taken too precisely; plus or minus 20% is often perfectly okay. Sometimes a details actually matters… you will find out by experimenting; then you can underline that part of the recipe.
I would like to see a Pareto cookbook. (“Potato soup: Peel and cut a few potatoes, cook in water for 10-30 minutes, add 1⁄4 teaspoon of salt. Expert version: while cooking add some bay leaves and a little fat.”) So that one could start with the simple version, and optionally add the less important details later.
Wow, that’s an awesome analogy!
I was thinking the same thing. I spend way too much time watching cooking videos on YouTube, and so if there was something like that out there I feel like there’s a good chance I would have stumbled across it at this point. Although I’d say Adam Ragusea is reasonably close.
>I would like to see a Pareto cookbook.
+1 there are some entries in this genre but I’ve found them to be low quality and still aimed at a dramatically higher level of effort:results ratios because of the selection effect on the sort of person who would write a cook book and take lots of actions for granted. I want recipes by Musashi. If you make an extra movement you’ll lose your arm in a sword fight.
If it weren’t for frozen peas and carrots my vegetable consumption would halve.
Frozen peas are a pretty big staple for me as well. I find them to be a bit inconsistent though. At best they’re sweet and kinda juicy, but at worst they don’t have that sweetness and are sorta mealy. Any tips?
I’ve never been able to eat frozen carrots because of the texture. Do you like them or just put up with them?
I don’t have nearly that much food quality resolution.