this post was submitted on 07 May 2026
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My grandma wouldn’t give me her recipe for my favorite dessert and she died:( My aunts try to reassure me by saying she probably didn’t have a recipe she probably felt it out.
my grandma’s famous brownies turned out to be box mix with chopped walnuts added 😂 and the box mix ingredients changed so they’re just not the same anymore.
i came up with my own deeply indulgent recipe that i prefer anyways.
When I asked for the recipe (fudge) my grandma legit sent me a cutout from the back of a marshmallow fluff jar. I am 100% certain that’s not the recipe she used.
No, there's a very real chance that's actually it. People get their recipes from somewhere. She wasn't some confectioner, inventing recipes from scratch.
You don’t know her
You might have been provided a "less-ipe". In communities where recipes are closely guarded, social pressures may force one to share what would be a personal secret. So they give an adulterated version ensuring only they, the original recipe holder can produce the beloved result.
One of my grandmothers had secret recipes, but when realized her time was coming to an end she taught each of her daughters different ones. So one was taught these sauces, another those desserts, and the other some special entrees. Of course the daughters got together and trained one another, but that was the point.
God people are stupid. Oh no. Can't give or my special recipe! No one will remember me!
It’s very likely:( I know some people who are holding out on their kids for that reason.
My mother has a couple recipes like this. Meanwhile I've taught the entire family (and my friends and some of the internet) all of my secret recipes. I only have two that I haven't taught her and I told her she can have them when she gives me hers.
i actually “caught” my grandma using the box mix. my aunt, her daughter, acted like i was foolish for being surprised 🤷🏻
That’s some pretty solid evidence. Caught in the act!
That’s why one day I insisted on standing next to my grandma to take notes. I‘m glad I did because otherwise her „I don’t have a recipe“ noodle dish would have been lost forever.
I did this too! I had her write down the ingredients of my favorite Mac and cheese she made, and I still have it.
I liked the grated from the bag as a kid because she made me grate my own cheese. Ha!
The secret ingredient was dust, dander, and flop sweat.
Source: my grandmother's kitchen. No disrespect granny, but your kitchen hygiene was awful.
It's the *snrk* that runs down her nose
I wonder if all great cooks "feel it out" or if that's just something I tell myself to help my disorganized ass sleep at night.
Feeling it out is my favorite part about cooking.
I just never ever write down what I do, so I can never reproduce it lol
Cooking allows for a lot of "feeling it out". For example, most spices you aren't really going to taste a difference between a tsp and a tbsp of the same spice. Just knowing what spices go into the dish you are making can often be enough.
For example, taco seasoning is onions, cumin, oragano, chili pepper, and paprika. By far, the cumin and onions drive the flavor, you could almost leave out everything else. With that in mind, it mostly ends up being just the technique. Brown the onions, toast the spices, brown the meat. The actual amount of spices that goes in won't make a huge difference one way or another. What does make a difference is if you grind your cumin instead of using preground (that's true for most seed spices).
Technique is often the most important thing vs exact ingredient measuring. The exception to this is baking. You must measure (preferably by weight) your flour and liquids. You can eventually do it by feel, but it's hard. You'll get much better results with a scale. Even then, it's mostly just the process of targeting the right hydration. 70% does well for a lot of white breads (For every 1 gram of flour add 0.7g of liquid).
Thank you for the best and simplest explanation of doing __% hydration for dough that I've seen.
No problem. I've definitely seen a lot of baking articles that somehow try and make this simple concept unbelievably convoluted.
The only other thing to know is that 1 mL of water = 1 gram of water. Which means 170g of water == 170 mL of water (At STP... blah blah blah. It's not super important to hit exactly 70% you can hit 75% or 65% and you'll be fine. It's close enough to true).
Wouldn't that be 41% hydration? You add 0.7g water to 1g flour, you get 1.7g of dough, 0.7g is about 41% of 1.7g
Nope. You aren't measuring the percentage of liquid in a dough. You are measuring the percentage of liquid relative to the mass of flour. That's why you can have 100% or higher hydration doughs.
In actual math, you are correct, but these are baker percentages where flour is always 100% and all other ingredients are relative to the flour.
So a recipe would look like this:
80% White Flour 20% Whole Grain 75% Water 15% Sour Dough Starter 2% Salt
Makes it really simple to scale recipes, you decide how much flour to use, for example 500g it becomes
400g White Flour 100g Whole Grain 375g Water 75g Sour Dough 10g Salt
Pro tip (really more of an amateur tip): Flour is a natural product that varies widely between different regions and there can be large differences in how much water they can hold and how much protein (gluten) it has. Hold back 10-15% of the water at first and only add it bit by bit when the dough feels dense and you think it (and you) can handle it. My biggest beginner mistakes were definetly trying high hydration doughs without the know how of how to handle such doughs and how to tell whether or not the flour could actually hold on to that much water. 65% Hydration can make also make a dope loaf that's much easier to handle
Oh that does actually make things much easier since the real percentage is much harder to track once you have several ingredients.
Yeah, and even when you do taste a difference, it's rarely actually bad. Usually, it's just a different hint of something in the overall taste. If you make the dish often, those variations are actually good, because it makes it more interesting.