The Parable of the Ham

The New York Times > Dining & Wine > At My Table | Nigella Lawson: An Inheritance of Flavors and Colors:

I remember once hearing a radio program about how recipes are passed on from one generation to the next, in this case, from grandmother to mother to daughter.

The daughter was talking about the pot roast she always made, beginning with the instructions: “Cut the ends off your piece of meat.” Asked why she did this, she said, “Because my mother always did.” The next interview was with her mother, who explained why she followed this seemingly important initial step: it was how she had seen her mother do it.

When the radio host asked the grandmother why it was necessary to cut the ends off the joint of meat before making a pot roast, she said, “Oh, it was because I didn’t have a pot big enough.”

So we credit recipes with much more authority than they necessarily deserve. It might be better to regard them really as more of an account of a way of cooking a dish rather than a do-this-or-die barrage of instructions.

Share: Delicious | Facebook