
The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’ - prostoalex
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/secret-family-recipes-copied
======
blahedo
I can do them one better: my family has a _meta_ -secret recipe. It didn't
used to be secret, but it became secret through no effort or intent of our
own.

For a long time, decades at this point, my mom has been known for the brownies
she brings to events (and, by extension, that my sister and I bring to
events). People would rave about them and demand the secret, which my mom, my
sister, and I would all freely give out: it's from a box, Betty Crocker, make
sure you get the "Supreme" kind and don't overbake it. That's it.

But. But! A while ago, maybe 3-4 years at this point, my mom noticed that the
brownie box had changed. She had a stockpile (being known for the brownies,
you see) but tried the new box before exhausting the stockpile. And it was
_not the same_. The new recipe had different amounts of every ingredient and
it just did not come out right. At all. She called the company to complain and
actually managed to escalate the call far enough to get someone to admit a
dark truth: the recipe on their end for the _mix_ hadn't changed, but for
various reasons to do with what they wanted to put on the "Nutrition Facts",
they had changed the instructions of how to prepare them and the amount of the
mix that was in each box.

My mom, not leaving this to chance, did a little bit of kitchen science and
verified that what came out of the old box (from the stockpile, following the
recipe) was either identical or a very close match to what came out of the new
box (but following the old recipe), albeit a little inconvenient as you now
needed roughly 1.25 boxes' worth of mix to make one batch of brownies. But
this was but a minor hurdle for the truly devoted; and it meant that we now
had, wait for it, a bona fide _secret family recipe_. The easiest one ever,
since it _still_ involved just making brownies from a box. (And keeping a jar
of "remainder brownie mix" for use in the next batch.)

The epilogue to the story is that although the good recipe had been stable for
a really long time, we were evidently not the only ones to notice a problem
with the new one, because the box recipe has changed on several occasions
since then—each time, as far as we can tell, without changing the blend in the
underlying mix (because if we follow our Secret Recipe it still turns out
fine). Really, I'm just waiting for them to throw up their hands, give up, and
return to the original recipe, which would sort of deprive my family of a good
story, but everybody would get better brownies so it's a win overall. :)

~~~
heleph
Good on your mother for persisting until she got to the bottom of the brownie
mystery! It’s a bit of a pity the company tampered with such a successful
recipe!

My brownie recipe is from a cookbook and I tried a lot of variations on it and
then had to concede that the person who wrote the recipe got it just right. I
make it with high quality chocolate and butter and then am very careful not to
over bake it and they turn out deliciously decadent every time!

~~~
pnutjam
I recently discovered that you can cut moist brownies with a plastic knife and
avoid them sticking and falling apart.

For those moments you just can't wait for them to cool, although, even cooled
a good moist brownie tends to stick to the knife.

Your welcome.

------
IgorPartola
I remember reading an old parable about a woman who always cut off the ends of
her meatloaf before serving it. At one point someone asked her why she did
that, and she said that her mother had always done it that way. So she went to
ask her mother, and got the same answer. The two of them went to the woman’s
grandmother who said that the serving plate she cooked the meatloaf was too
small, so she cut off the ends to make it fit. I have many doubts that this is
true, but also I think it does illustrate a good point about how these things
get started.

Most of my family’s “secret” recipes come from a big Soviet cookbook, but
adapted for limited availability of products (cooking in Moscow where the book
was published was always very different than cooking in Soviet Ukraine).

I actually wonder how many of the Blue Apron/HelloFresh recipes will wind up
being “secret family recipes” in a few years.

~~~
dkarl
Primo Levi told a similar story about tracking down the source of a lacquer
recipe when he was working at a paint factory. There was a point in the recipe
where the instructions called for adding half an onion into the vat of
lacquer. As a chemist, he was fascinated by this because he could not think of
any way the chemicals in the onion, in that quantity, could affect the end
product. He eventually found a retired employee living nearby who was able to
explain that the onion was used to check the temperature of the lacquer. When
the onion started to bubble, the mixture was hot enough to proceed to the next
step. By the time Primo Levi was working at the plant in the 1940s, the plant
had upgraded to modern equipment with integrated temperature gauges, but the
onion remained in the recipe.

~~~
IgorPartola
That's very clever. Reminds me of doing plumbing with copper piping and using
bread to stuff the pipes before soldering them in order to not have the
leftover water flowing to where you are soldering, making it impossible.

~~~
tonyarkles
You're a genius. Absolutely. That's such a good solution! I had considered
using a rag or something, but I was concerned about it getting stuck around a
bend, as well as the awkwardness of rolling it up _just right_. If you
overheat the pipe, the bread will just burn off harmlessly, and if it gets
stuck, you could just turn the water on and it'll dissolve it or pop it out.

Thank you. There's an awkward pipe in my bathroom whose shut-off won't quite
close enough. My wife will be so thrilled.

~~~
IgorPartola
Oh I’m no genius. This was a trick someone told me _after_ I spent 6 hours on
a single horizontal joint. (Fortunately?) I haven’t had a chance to try it. I
also don’t know what would happen if the bread headed straight for your water
heater. But aside from that, I do think this is a valuable trick. Hope it
works for you!

~~~
tonyarkles
Luckily, the joint I've got to deal with, the worst case is that the bread
would end up inside the faucet and might require a bit of cleaning. Seems like
just running some water through it aught to dissolve the bread and let things
carry on. I'll use crappy white bread to make sure it's easily dissolvable :)

------
white-flame
My mom made the best pie crust anybody who ate it ever tasted. Her recipe came
from a Crisco label.

One of the steps specifically said to slowly stir a liquid into the mix with a
fork. Everybody else who attempted the recipe used a spoon and didn't get
anywhere near the proper texture. So her difference was simply that others
wouldn't follow the directions exactly.

~~~
bsder
It's more than that.

I have an amazing chocolate cake recipe--I'm _SURE_ it's cribbed from some
magazine, chocolate container, or something. I have stopped giving it out as
people simply can't get it right.

There are three classes of failure:

The first class of failure is in not following directions. When it says "1/2
teaspoon", they mean it. Baking is like lab--small things often make big
differences. "Helping" one of these people is frustrating--"Um, try actually
following the recipe."

The second class of failure is that a lot of people don't have basic cooking
skills. "My chocolate is weird"\--yeah, water does that to melted chocolate.
"I can't whip this meringue"\--yeah, you can't get even a _trace_ of yolk in
that or it's not going to work.

The third class of failure is that people don't seem to pay attention and
learn. Hmmm, that cake recipe doesn't seem to like humid days. Uh, oh, there
aren't any bubbles in my batter--my baking soda/baking powder are probably
bad. Sniff, sniff--that doesn't smell right--did you use margarine or butter
to prepare that pan?

One of my favorite for this was reconstructing my grandmothers kalach recipe.
It just never smelled right. Until I remembered that she used to have a
container underneath the cabinet that she used for the recipe--as a kid that
never meant anything. As an adult, I was like "Hmmmmm, I bet that was _lard_."
Sure enough, that made it smell right.

Cooking requires paying attention, but baking, especially, is in the details.

~~~
robotsonic
On the first class of failure, sometimes people take it a bit too far. I've
watched people stress about how they level off their 1/4 tsp because if it's
too heaped, it will be too much, or if there is a divot, it will be too
little. As a percent error, there really isn't a real difference. Just the
differences in brands and batches of ingredients will cause more error in your
recipes than a slight miss-measure.

There's definitely a need to measure well, but that third class of failure you
mentioned is probably better to pay attention to. If you know your ingredients
and operating conditions, you'll definitely fair better.

On the topic of measuring, I do wish more new recipe books went back to using
weights. Baking with a scale is so much easier/faster/less clean up. It
surprises me how many people I know who think it is too much work to use a
scale until they see me do it and how little effort it really is.

~~~
graphitezepp
I find it amusing you downplay the importance (not that I disagree) of
precision, and than advocate for measuring by weight for entirely different
reasons. Precision is the typical argument people make for scales.

~~~
robotsonic
I see the similar behaviour with measurement on scales though. There is this
need to make it EXACTLY 2.50 pounds. If it is 2.52, well that just
unacceptable, and the seesaw of removing and adding begins. I'll admit, I
occasionally fall into this trap until I consider what the consequences are
(pretty much nothing in terms of what I'm baking, but a decent waste of time).

------
Tade0
Here's an opposite example: I have a friend who has amazing grit[0]. One time
he figured that the cheesecake he's making would use some improvement so he
experimented with a sort of an evolutionary algorithm where he would change
one or two things, note the results and combine some of the changes on another
try(or that's how I understood his process).

After over forty instances he has perfected the cheesecake. It's now much
better than store bought in terms of taste and also usually better looking.
The recipe itself isn't secret, but you'd be hard pressed to replicate his
work. Apparently it's rather the _skill_ than the _procedure_ that makes it so
great.

[0] He rewrote "The Hobbit" in Tengwar several times using a fountain pen.

~~~
elvinyung
When you say Tengwar, do you mean English transliterated into Tengwar, or
Sindarin/Quenya?

~~~
Tade0
Transliteration only, since most of his works were meant as gifts, so he
wanted them to be readable.

Also this wasn't done in english, but that's just a minor detail.

------
floren
For me, the most important part of the "secret family recipe" is the element
of curation. There's surely hundreds of recipes for almond kringler out there,
but I _know_ that the one my mom uses at Christmas is extremely delicious. If
your family has decided they really like the sugar cookie recipe in the 1985
edition of the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, perfect! The "family" part
of "secret family recipe" means that it's the recipe your family likes best,
and the fact it came from such-and-such a cookbook can be the secret.

When I go online and search for a recipe, I'm taking a chance that it may be
awful. That's why when I find an online recipe I enjoy, I write it down in a
special notebook. This also has the advantage of letting me cut out all the
prefacing garbage ("my husband and my 3 beautiful children LOVE coming home on
a crisp winter afternoon to a delicious bowl of this yummy soup blah blah
blah") and trim down the directions to the sort of terse and informative stuff
you'd find in a real cookbook. Then if I ever want to make it again, I don't
have to deal with the absolute garbage of modern recipe sites popping up
notifications about how butter is on sale 2 miles away, and how I can sign up
for the email newsletter, etc.

------
zerocrates
On the "fudge guy" who was using the recipe from the marshmallow container, or
the Toll House cookies winning 2 of the top spots: there's a lot more to good
results than just the recipe. Equipment, skill, the idiosyncratic ways you
_don 't_ follow the recipe or fill in where it's underspecified... Don't
necessarily give in to the temptation to ascribe the phenomenon merely to
irrationality or sentiment.

Plus, it must be said, the Toll House recipe is pretty darn good. Not what I
use myself but sometimes the classics are classics for a reason.

~~~
goodcanadian
Indeed, my mother (unsurprisingly) uses exactly the same recipe as my
grandmother did for chocolate chip cookies (I suspect it also came from the
side of a chocolate chip bag). The cookies turned out very differently,
however, depending on who made them.

~~~
neogodless
Oooh - we have this. Where some of my family members refuse to include the
salt, or prefer butter that melts like crazy, and they get harder, flatter
versions of the cookies. My aunt (who married a chemist) pointed out how the
salt actually means something, and I started including it again, and the
cookies got so much better (in my opinion.)

~~~
haikuginger
Butter handling is key in my own chocolate chip cookies, I've found. Let it
soften too much, or overbeat the batter, and you'll end up with Frisbees.
Ideally you want to cream the butter and sugars until just combined; they'll
get more thoroughly mixed as you add flour and other ingredients.

------
jerf
There's another interesting angle in this, which is a demonstration of how
important memory and emotion is in food. The restaurateur who had created
Michelin Star-winning restaurants thought the standard Hellman's potato salad
recipe was very good. Now, I'm not _that_ much of a chef, and I'm not going to
say it's a _bad_ recipe, but a chef of that caliber ought to taste even a
very-well prepared instance of that recipe and immediately come up with half-
a-dozen ways to improve it. I could do that in my kitchen, which is really not
_that_ well stocked with that sort of thing. There's _classes_ of
improvements; use a more interesting vinegar, use a more interesting oil, use
more interesting herbs, make your own mayonnaise, use different potatos, each
of those representing half-a-dozen options on their own, to say nothing of the
work you can do with combinations.

If you served the Hellman's recipe to a Michelin reviewer, you're not getting
a star. And I'm sure that Danny Meyer would know that instantly, were he not
influenced by his memories and emotions.

Also, to be clear, I am by no means being _critical_ of him for bringing his
emotion into the dish. If it's anything, it's a positive thing, in my opinion.
I'm just showing this as a very clear example of how complicated reactions to
food can be.

~~~
cortesoft
You are right about the role of emotion in the enjoyment of food, but I think
you are actually underestimating its effect on the hypothetical food reviewer.

I think it actually is very possible to earn a Michelin Star serving a
Hellman’s recipe. If the atmosphere is good, the service and presentation of
the food high quality, and the overall experience classy, that potato salad is
going to taste really good to even the most critical of food critics. They are
susceptible to the emotional parts of the food experience just as much as
anyone, and is in fact part of the review.

------
beat
Book recommendation, if you're into this stuff... _The Cooking Gene - A
Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South_ , by
Michael W Twitty. I'm currently halfway through, and it's fascinating. It
delves deep into the roots of pre-20th century recipes and food traditions,
and how African, European, and Native American cooking techniques and
ingredients (along with the social structures of slavery) joined to create
what became Southern cooking.

Take that Thanksgiving standby, sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top. That
dish can be traced directly to slavery in the Caribbean! Yams were a big part
of the diet (a food from Africa), and on sugar plantations, they would take
cooked yams to the boiling vats and ladle boiling sugar juice directly onto
the yams. This came to America via the slave trade (many American slaves came
from the Caribbean rather than directly from Africa), and evolved into new
dishes that preserved the flavor without easy access to giant vats of boiling
sugar.

The tracing of family recipes back to their origins is amazing.

~~~
Pulcinella
I’ll also add the recommendations I usually make.

Anyone interested in learning to cook, _Americas Test Kitchen Cooking School_
(And also _Cooks Illustrated Cooking Science_ and _Science of Good Cooking_ )
would probably be good for much of HN's audience. It is much more of a cooking
"textbook" than most cookbooks. It explains what you are doing and why you do
it instead of just a big list of recipes. There is also _Modernist Cuisine_
but those are really pricey.

These books tackle the “science” side of cooking rather than your
recommendation’s history side. Both are, of course, excellent approaches and
are much better than your standard cook book’s vomit of recipes with no
context.

~~~
beat
Certainly, _The Cooking Gene_ is not just a straight cookbook - it's barely a
cookbook at all. Instead, it's a history book more than anything, using the
evolution of a cuisine to trace the cultural history of the African diaspora
in America, and its broader impact on American culture. The appearance of
certain foods, of ingredients and techniques, is a map of history. Fascinating
stuff! (I got it on recommendation of a friend in the State Department, who
called it the best book she read in 2017.)

As for learning to cook... yeah, the more I see "recipe" books completely
decontextualized, the more bizarre they seem to me. Cooking is cultural, and
arises from available ingredients, available tools, and known techniques. The
idea that you can just make dishes completely in isolation from their cultural
context is weirdly postmodernist.

~~~
JasonFruit
So I'm making weird, postmodernist curries, pho, and tacos? Fun!

~~~
beat
One could argue that the ready global availability of ingredients, plus
YouTube and blog recipes, has itself created a new cuisine. But without a
coherent form, it's hard to say what that actually is. So yeah,
postmodernism...

I wonder how this ties in with the observations about Green Revolution
agriculture and its impact on obesity and other modern dietary diseases? Like
Michael Pollam's research?

------
empath75
A few years back, I was backpacking through Central America and spent a few
weeks in the highlands of Guatemala staying with a Mayan family while taking
Spanish lessons.

Part of the deal was you ate dinner with the family, and they cooked for you.

One of the first nights I was there, she made this amazing rice and meat dish,
which I assumed was some kind of traditional Mayan thing, so I asked her what
it was. After a few minutes of her struggling to understand my Spanish, she
hopped up, walked into the kitchen and came back...

With a soy sauce bottle — on the side was a recipe for ‘stir fry’

------
DamnYuppie
This brings back some great memories. My mom made fantastic home made jams.
All through my childhood family members and friends would clamor for her jams
she made at Christmas.

This year I finally got her to give me her recipe....it was basically the
recipe on the packet of Sure Jell :-/ She did note that the important part was
to by fresh fruits for the jam and not frozen so I guess there was that.
Regardless it was a huge let down to know the secret was the recipe on the box
of pectin that was $.50 each.

~~~
macNchz
To be fair, if the jams are canned it’s important to make sure you have the
right amount of sugar and acid to make it safely shelf stable. I make jams
every summer to give to family and friends and I still follow the recipes in
the box of Pomona’s pectin. The thing I’ve been perfecting over the years is
finding the best fruit at the farmer’s market and then processing it
(peeling/blending/cooking) it in a way that yields a pleasing jam.

~~~
haikuginger
The processing is key; the prime example for me is peach jam, where if you
just chop the fruit up, you end up with peach suspended in mostly-clear gel.
If, on the other hand, you blend the peach mixture, you end up with a
delicious consistency that's flavorful all the way through and easy to spread.

------
7dare
This might be biased because a "secret recipe" doesn't hold very much of its
secret in the ingredients or instructions (all chocolate chip cookie recipes
are quite similar) but the little tricks.

Adding a bit of something, or the timings of certain steps might be
undocumented and make the secret recipe better than the famous one.

------
Beltiras
I have a recipe that I know is original (since I developed it myself) and I do
my best not to keep secret. Good recipes are way better when shared.

Date chicken:

Cut two pounds of chicken breast into thin strips and marinate in red pesto
[0] (one jar) for at least an hour. Bring two cans of coconut milk to boil
with a pound of dried stoneless dates. Reduce heat and let simmer for half an
hour, beating with a whisk to break up the dates. You should end up with a
sauce that you can easily pour on the chicken later. When you start the sauce,
start heating an oven to 250°C. Put the chicken in an ovenproof container and
grill the slices for about 15 minutes, turning the slices over at least once.
Pour the sauce on top and top off with feta cheese cubes (use dry feta, not
the olive-oil drenched salad cubes). Grill till golden brown.

Serve with brown rice.

[0]: [https://www.ocado.com/webshop/product/Filippo-Berio-Red-
Pest...](https://www.ocado.com/webshop/product/Filippo-Berio-Red-
Pesto/50083011)

------
majos
My grandmother found some old family recipes from pre-independence India. I've
never made any of them because they're sometimes denominated in units that no
longer exist (a "viss" for example), and some of them are even measured in
_currency_ ("buy 10 rupees of x"). Maybe I could try and account for inflation
and local prices 100? years ago but...I'm not optimistic.

~~~
e15ctr0n
You might want to talk to the editor of the website _India of the Past_ [0]
who collects not only old recipes [1] but also interesting facts on how much
money bought how many items [2][3].

[0] [http://www.indiaofthepast.org/contribute-
memories](http://www.indiaofthepast.org/contribute-memories)

[1] Recipes | [http://www.indiaofthepast.org/contribute-memories/read-
contr...](http://www.indiaofthepast.org/contribute-memories/read-
contributions/cooking)

[2] Old Lahore | _You could buy up to 25 seers of flour for one rupee, and
gold was only Rs 17 a tola._ | [http://www.indiaofthepast.org/contribute-
memories/read-contr...](http://www.indiaofthepast.org/contribute-
memories/read-contributions/life-back-then/361-old-lahore)

[3] Pindi Memoirs by a Sikh Son of the Soil Part 3 | _Asli ghee was Rs. 14 for
a tin. Eggs were two annas a dozen, and bananas were eight annas per dozen.
Gold was Rs. 22 per tola (about 10 grams)._ |
[http://www.indiaofthepast.org/contribute-memories/read-
contr...](http://www.indiaofthepast.org/contribute-memories/read-
contributions/life-back-then/452-pindi-memoirs-by-a-sikh-son-of-the-soil-3)

------
todd8
My wife and I have a the simplest, silly "secret" recipe.

Many of her girlfriends don't work and some are really amazing cooks, but my
wife who works full time doesn't feel like she has time to bake cookies or
make three-bean salad or whatever. She simply knows the best places to pick
those things up around town, transfers the food to plastic containers for
transport, and labels it with a piece of tape that simply says something like
"Paige's chocolate chip cookies".

Even though our friends by now have figured out the "secret" it still makes
everyone happy. (Including me. I find cooking for others interesting, but I
don't do it much anymore.)

~~~
hycaria
That sounds kinda shallow. Why bother with faking, as obviously no one cares ?

~~~
SirZimzim
Especially chocolate chip cookies

------
fl0wenol
My takeaway from this is whoever came up with the idea of including recipe
ideas on/in the packaging of staples or kitchen products was a goddamn genius.

Because a common theme among many of these mistaken secret family recipe
stories is that the concoctions are taken from those marketing materials, and
I'd expect whatever they picked to feature would be tasty and hard to screw up
to put that product in a good light.

If it's a hit with the family, they're making it frequently, and pretty soon
the aunt or uncle or grandparent who makes it for the holiday gathering can do
it from memory and so it's easy to assume they made it up themselves.

I bet if you were to ask that cook about their "secret" recipe to this day
they'd make sure to emphasize that you have to use So-and-So brand chocolate
chips for it to come out right; the very same from which they got the recipe
in the first place, and without which it probably doesn't come out right
(maybe intentionally)

Goddamned brilliant.

------
mml
I once asked my grandmother (RIP) how she makes such amazing dumplings:

"First, you go and find a nice fat goose..."

------
ocdtrekkie
I don't know if any of the things my grandmother has made were once from a
recipe, but a few years back I spent some time with a digital camcorder
recording her making them. Since she eyeballs most of it... it's really hard
to imagine having properly captured this any other way.

------
mc32
I like the story --I don't recall where I heard it or perhaps read it. Someone
recounting the story of finding out their grandma's delicious marinara sauce
was not made with tomatoes from the garden but rather plain old store bought
canned tomatoes --but prepared just right.

~~~
girvo
A note for people using tinned tomatoes: buy the whole ones, not the diced
ones, and dice them in the can yourself. Makes a large difference in flavour,
the quality of the tomatoes they use for whole is better than for diced :)

~~~
elvinyung
It's actually more complicated than that. Here's the Serious Eats analysis
about different types of canned tomatoes:
[https://www.seriouseats.com/2015/10/canned-tomato-types-
and-...](https://www.seriouseats.com/2015/10/canned-tomato-types-and-use-what-
kind-to-buy.html)

TL;DR: Pre-diced canned tomatoes are bad because calcium chloride (a firming
agent), combined with a larger surface area, makes it not break down properly
when cooking.

~~~
draugadrotten
Different tomatoes taste quite different too. One brand which is great for
pasta and pizza is Mutti. (I am unaffiliated, just a happy customer.)

[https://www.mutti-parma.com/us/#!/our-tomato-fields-and-
your...](https://www.mutti-parma.com/us/#!/our-tomato-fields-and-your-kitchen)

~~~
cwyers
Pretty much every blind taste test you'll find done in America of grocery
store canned tomatoes has brands grown in California vastly outperforming
imports.

~~~
SirZimzim
Blind taste test of people near California?

~~~
cwyers
Cooks Illustrated (subscription required) is based out of Boston, and they
prefer the domestic brands:

[https://www.cooksillustrated.com/taste_tests/231-canned-
whol...](https://www.cooksillustrated.com/taste_tests/231-canned-whole-
tomatoes?incode=MCSCD00L0&ref=new_search_experience_3)

Splendid Table is based out of Minnesota, I believe:

[https://www.splendidtable.org/story/the-6-best-brands-of-
can...](https://www.splendidtable.org/story/the-6-best-brands-of-canned-
tomatoes)

Epicurius picks an Indiana brand, with California brand Muir Glen at #2:

[https://www.epicurious.com/expert-advice/best-canned-
tomatoe...](https://www.epicurious.com/expert-advice/best-canned-tomatoes-san-
marzano-italian-taste-test-article)

One of the issues is that supermarket imported Italian tomatoes tend to be
packed in puree, not uncooked juices. If you're looking for fresh tomato
flavor (and if you aren't, just buy crushed tomatoes), you want to buy an
American brand that seals the cans at lower temps for longer times to keep the
tomatoes fresh.

------
DoreenMichele
The best cooks I know all have an excellent sense of smell and rely heavily
upon it to get the timing right.

Try putting that in your official recipe.

~~~
lulmerchant
My mother in law has taught me a bunch of her recipes, and a lot of them have
a step that she describes “...until it has a smell”, like “fry the spices
until they have a smell”, which is actually a specific aroma, but I have no
idea how to write down an aroma in my notes.

~~~
culot
We need to develop a stink-line-based notation system for aromae.

------
carlmr
I bake a few cakes regularly. Most of the recipes can be found online, but I
usually have found some tweaks that make them taste better (subjective). So I
make notes of them in my little book.

I think most recipes are derivative. You have to start somewhere when you make
cornbread. So why not start with a standard recipe. Then you substitute some
ingredients because you're missing something at home. You find it either
tastes better or worse. Then you can improve the recipe.

In the end my cornbread recipe only has 2 different ingredients that give it
better texture and better aroma. It's still almost the same recipe.

~~~
ghostDancer
The little book is the real secret weapon of a baker. Where you put the
details that make the recipe stand out or adapt to your preference.

------
yakult
Alternative hypothesis: most 'secret family recipes' are in fact original.
However, the average SFR never get passed around, because it produces average-
tasting stuff.

The recipe on food labels come from companies that know the product inside-
out, have incentive to help you optimize the taste/effort tradeoff, and maybe
have spent time and money on research. They tastes better, so they're the ones
people remember.

tl;dr: people remember a disproportionately high number of plagiarized recipes
because those are the good ones.

------
andrewaylett
We've got a few family recipes. They're mostly not really secret, and at least
in our recipe book their sources are referenced if known. But a big part of
what makes the end result good is the practice we have in making them.

The real "secret" recipes tend to be for things that build on a public recipe,
or are simple enough not to need one. If you asked us how to make it (and we'd
be happy to share what we can), we'd only be able to give you the base recipe,
or perhaps not even that, but what makes them good is the local tweaks,
ingredient selection and experience in cooking that gives consistent (or at
least consistently good) results.

If you want a Hollywood example, consider Po's Dad's "Secret Ingredient" soup
in Kung Fu Panda.

------
pipio21
Specially in America, with only recent History of course family recipes are
adapted from books.

On the other hand my family(in Europe) holds recipes that are more than one
hundred years old. Most books recipes came from taking the knowledge of
grandmas on villages on places with culinary History.

Those books serve as text books over which modern cuisine has evolved.

But is a kind of food that most Americans will consider strange. They are
sophisticated stews that take forever to make or have flavor that they are not
used to.

When I went to China the hardest thing to get used to was all the flavors of
their food, which is very rich, but most Westerners do not know
it(note:Chinese restaurants have very little to do most of the time as real
Chinese food is not commercial in the West).

------
madenine
I find that most of our family 'secret' recipes are the result of trying
several recipes for a given dish, picking the best one but incorporating
lessons learned from the others. Its not uncommon for a page in our family
book to consists of a photocopied page from a published cookbook + notes like
"fully mix in the spices 1 at a time in this order:" where the recipe just
says "mix in the spices".

Additional notes like "[cousin] likes this with more cinnamon, but [uncle]
will always try to add more sugar" are helpful for holidays.

------
wcunning
My mother, and actually her mother before that, made modifications to the
Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie recipe. Specifically, replacing butter
with shortening and using just a bit of extra flour, while whipping the eggs a
bit more in mixing. I watched an episode of Alton Brown's Good Eats where he
made that exact set of modifications to get puffy/cakey chocolate chip
cookies, some 20 years after Grandma started baking them that way. It's always
amusing to see your old school process be supported by proper food science.

------
conductr
Both my wife and my family have these instances regarding Betty Crocker
recipes / Southern Living cookbook recipes. Although, I will say, our attempts
at following the recipes are still not the same as our grandmother's. What
I've noticed is our grandmothers are just better cooks; allowing them to
eyeball measure, adjust temps to conditions, time things out better, and
generally solve problems as they arise.

In a sense the recipe is just an idea, the cook still needs good execution.

------
souprock
A century ago, my family swiped a recipe by spying on another family. I
suppose it could have come from a molasses bottle or even from an 1800s
cookbook, but good luck finding such an origin at this point. It makes lovely
gingerbread men.

[https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Molasses_Cookies](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Molasses_Cookies)

------
YesThatTom2
I remember this... from nearly half a century ago.

The February 7, 1976 episode of The Jeffersons ("Louise's Cookbook") had this
plot. A publisher asks Louise to write a cookbook of her ghetto recipes.
(spoiler alert) It turns out her family recipes were all from a previously-
published book that her grandmother (mother?) had been using.

------
ph0rque
I've been fascinated with the story of the original olivier salad for years:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivier_salad#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivier_salad#History)

------
hungryducks
My mother was famous for her Yams and Stuffing she made every Thanksgiving.
Everyone always wanted to know. I finally asked her for the recipes and found
out it was from a newspaper clipping. I laughed pretty good finding out.

------
sizzzzlerz
If your mother's secret recipe calls for Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup,
Velveeta processed cheese, or Jello mix, here's a hint: It probabally isn't
original.

------
Kluny
What I want to know is where does the recipe on the side of the box come from?
The robots who came up with that are the true heroes, imho.

~~~
aidenn0
My mom always would use recipes from the sides of containers. She said
"they're going to try 100s of recipes to find one that will make their product
look good, so no need for me to try a dozen recipes that they have probably
already tried"

Often the recipes were customer submitted (though I believe the Toll House
cookie recipe came from a restaurant chef), and companies would test and/or
tweak recipes before putting them on the side of the box.

------
plopilop
I have an opposite story.

Once upon a time in the French countryside, there was an old pastry chef who
was well known for her unique creation (of which I forgot the name), that,
even 40 years later, my father still praises.

The recipe was only known by the pastry chef, even though the famous local
restaurant chef (Georges Blanc, now 3 Michelin stars, at least 2 stars at the
time) begged her to sell him the secret, whatever the price. She said, "my
recipe will follow me into the grave". And it did.

TL;DR: come in Bresse, best food ever.

------
mathattack
I got a secret salmon recipe from my aunt only to see it on the salmon
wrapper.

------
Zigurd
My grandmother's pīrāgi were made with Poppin "Fresh" dough.

------
mikek
Obligatory Onion article: [https://local.theonion.com/italian-grandmother-
doesn-t-have-...](https://local.theonion.com/italian-grandmother-doesn-t-have-
heart-to-tell-family-a-1822927180)

------
venomsnake
The recipe is the easy part. The execution and getting the right ingredients
is all important.

Granma X was awesome not because of the recipe but because she practiced her
whole life making it.

------
bighi
In other news, water is wet.

