Why Grandma’s recipes don’t work

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If Grandma’s recipes aren’t what they used to be, it’s not her fault. Blame the companies that make the packaged goods sold by grocery stores.

Reader Kathleen Brewster of Santa Barbara said her mother’s family favorite cheese torte suddenly began shrinking from the sides of the pan. At first the family worried it represented a decline in her mother’s mental acuity. But then they realized that the pint cartons of cottage cheese no longer contained a full pound -- and that was throwing the recipe off.

She and other readers were fuming at manufacturers after reading our story about shrinking packages. The story explained how that half-gallon container of ice cream has shrunk over several years to just 48 ounces. It also talked about how manufacturers had subtly altered the size of peanut butter jars, cereal boxes and toilet paper rolls in ways that were hard for consumers to detect.

‘Long-held knowledge related to using a specific product or brand’s sized container in a recipe is no longer dependable. We all learned a valuable lesson to check product weights. Perhaps price-juggling and container-altering manufacturers should have their test kitchens revise recipes too,� Brewster wrote to The Times.

Carye Williams of Kansas City had the same problem. Williams was using a cookbook from the early ‘80s to make a chocolate dessert. It required the use of a number of brand-name products.

“After cleaning the burnt chocolate slop out of the bottom of the oven, I checked the empty packages and found that NOTHING was the same weight as it was when the cookbook was published -- which meant that I had way too much baking powder, etc., for the amount of chocolate chips and crushed candy bars in the recipe,� William said. “It was a valuable lesson, and one I’m passing along to my friends.�

--Jerry Hirsch