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From: jeffw@midas.UUCP (Jeff Winslow)
Newsgroups: net.cooks
Subject: Re: "Superstition" in Cooking
Message-ID: <72@midas.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 2-Jan-86 22:29:04 EST
Article-I.D.: midas.72
Posted: Thu Jan  2 22:29:04 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Jan-86 04:47:20 EST
References: <386@zaphod.UUCP>
Reply-To: jeffw@midas.UUCP (Jeff Winslow)
Distribution: net
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Lines: 30
Summary: 

In article <386@zaphod.UUCP> dkatz@zaphod.UUCP (Dave Katz) writes:
>
>	One thing that has always interested me in cooking is the ritual
>acts that recipes give as a guide to greater success.
>
> [...]
>	What I'm interested in here are other people's suggestions for
>cooking rules/methods which they beleive are unnecessary ritual or
>superstition.  For some of us, this might make cooking easier by
>removing unneeded work.  For others, we might come to understand why we
>do certain things, or if food preparation methods have changed such that
>the methods are no longer needed.

My wife and I have made about 200-300 chocolate truffles each year for the
last three years for Christmas presents. The first year we grated the chocolate
before melting it, as called for in our recipe. While this provided a
spectacular display of the effects of static electricity (especially with
plastic bowls), it was so much work, even with a food processor, that we
skipped the grating step the next year - and got just as good a result.

The recipe also seemed to call for forming the truffles as soon as the mixture
was sufficiently thickened. We found this year that leaving the bowl in the
refrigerator overnight before forming seemed to make smoother truffles -
probably some kind of diffusion going on.

Unfortunately for the would-be lazy cook, the periodic stirring of the cooling
mixture appears to be very necessary!

			Think I'll go eat one of the left-overs...
			    Jeff Winslow