[jfengel]

That was the style of recipes until the Fanny Farmer cookbook in 1896:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boston_Cooking-School_Cook...

They basically assumed you had already watched the recipe being made, and just needed a reminder. (Chefs still communicate a lot like this with each other.) My favorite recipe direction ever, from Martha Washington's family cookbook, is "cook until it is enough".

Fanny Farmer invented the idea of rigorous measurements. And later, exact temperatures and times, when thermostats were invented. Scientific cooking is great for getting the results to come out every time and to communicate recipes to people who don't already basically know them. That took a lot of standardization and didn't come about until quite recently.

[MereInterest]

The only downside to her cookbooks is that she used volumetric measurements rather than weight. Volumetric measurements are fine for liquids, but very imprecise for ingredients that may be densely or loosely packed. Depending on how you scoop it, the density of flour may vary by as much as 50%. Measurement by mass avoids this issue entirely.

Source: https://www.seriouseats.com/2017/03/how-to-measure-flour-dip...

[jghn]

It seems a bit unfair to label it a downside to just her cookbooks. At least in the US, it's only been recently that recipe providers have transitioned to weight based recipes, with folks like Kenji championing the transition.

[zikzak]

Agreed, but this was normal in professional pastry cookery. I guess I agree with both of you. The purpose of using exact measurements is to ensure exact reproduction of the product. Not using bakers percentages when you can, takes away from that goal. However, if this had been done, far fewer people would have used the recipes.

[nicbou]

Cooking by weight is much more pleasant. You can just put a bowl on the scale and keep adding stuff to it. It saves you a lot of cleaning.

[coddle-hark]

> cook until it is enough

I’m glad recipes have moved past this but I still see code with these types of comments all the time. Maybe in another 100 years it’ll be unthinkable to write documentation this way? One can hope.