On following the rules

There is a joke that has gone around for years (generations?) that goes like this: a girl watches her mother make Sunday roast while growing up. Each time, the mother cuts a couple of inches off one end of the roast, puts it in the pan, adds seasoning, and puts it into the oven. When the girl grows up, she makes her roasts the same way: cutting off one end of the roast, into the pan, add seasoning, and pop into the oven. Her young daughter, watching this happen, asks “Why do you always cut the end off of the roast?” The woman shrugs and says “That’s how my mom did it and it always turned out great.” Her daughter replies “Why don’t we call her to find out the reason?” So they get on the phone with Grandma, who explains that she cut off the ends “because that was the only way to fit the roast into my roasting pan.”

While this is a joke that makes you groan rather than laugh, there is a point to be made. Sometimes we learn techniques or habits that do not have a basis in food science but rather in someone’s adaptations due to equipment limitations or a misunderstanding of the science. I cannot tell you how many people I know who still believe that searing a steak will “seal in the juices” even though food scientists have clearly debunked this theory. Sometimes you just need to ask the question even if you have been following a rule. That is what food writer Bee Wilson did earlier today on Twitter. She asked the Twitterverse “Why do recipes tell us to grease the cake tin before lining it with baking parchment? I always skip this step, reasoning that the parchment is non-stick anyway. Am I missing something?”

The replies were fascinating. Many people just did it because they read it somewhere, and everyone had a different theory on why you need to (or did not need to) grease the cake tin before adding parchment. My own decision to not grease the pan came from a professional baker who said they never greased their pans at all; they just put in parchment and that was all. Of course I was not privy to what type of cake pans the bakery was using or whether this was a matter of cost savings vs. benefits.

While not greasing the pans prior to putting in parchment has worked for me, I am not trying to tell anyone whether she should or should follow this ‘rule’. Rather, I find it intriguing that many of these so-called rules of cooking and baking remain unchallenged or are only debated in extremely small circles. Most people read the directions on the recipe – or follow the practices they learned at their parent’s elbow – and that is that. There is a lot you can learn from taking a step back and asking a simple question: why?