bocephus Thank,
A good recipe should contain all the information for a person familiar with a kitchen and cook to follow and reproduce the item based on the recipe alone.
An advance recipe includes things like temperature. Room temp or cold. Important with things like butter or eggs. While there is a professional standard, most home cooks would never know just what to do.
Brings up a fun story, funny but all too true.
Honey, Why Do You Cut the Ends Off the Ham?
A husband and his wife were in their kitchen. The husband was sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper while his wife was preparing a ham for dinner. The husband watched the wife cut off about one inch from either end of the ham. He asked why she cut the end off, proclaiming “that’s a waste of good ham!”
That’s the Way My Mom Prepared It
She said “that’s the way my mom prepared the ham.” The husband asked “why did your mom cut the ends off?” The wife didn’t know.
Mom, Why Do You Cut the Ends Off The Ham?
Later, the wife called her mom to find out why she cut the ends of the ham off. Her mom said “because that was the way my mom prepared ham.”
Finally, the Real Answer!
The wife’s grandma passed away several years earlier, but her Grandpa was still living. She called her Grandpa and asked “Grandpa, why did Grandma cut the ends off of the ham?” He was silent as he thought for a moment. Then he replied, “so the ham could fit in the baking pan.”
All too many recipes, including great cook books contain such things, people just do with out regard to why they do it.
