Don't be a Recipe Follower!

[Derrel]

Actually Joe, chefs do follow a recipe. That recipe however is not what the average cook is aware of. Instead of exact ingredients for a particular cake there is a basic recipe for the construction of cake. Let us take the basic layer cake for example. The proportions of sugar to flour is from 100 to 145% sugar to flour. The weight of the eggs should be equal to the weight of the shortening. The shortening should be around 50 to 60% the amount of the flour and the amount of liquid should be 20 to 30% the weight of the sugar. When dealing with coco in the cake then the sugar ratio should be around the 145% ratio to the flour and the liquid should be closer to 40 or 50% ratio to sugar. The combined weight of the eggs and liquids should equal or exceed the weight of the sugar. It is really a quite simple formula.

Once you learn it you can create variations on end based on your particular tastes. The same goes for other forms of cooking such as cookies breads and basically any other such food preparation.

I am wondering if this cake business represents a "recipe", or if it represents more of a "formula", in the sense of a schematic or theoretical sense of the word? Meaning, is this way of describing the construction of cake, the combining of ingredients, based more on the underlying FUNDAMENTALS, as opposed to a single, defined, and rigid RECIPE?

Doesn't the above description of how to make cake constitute more of a theoretical, and well-schooled "understanding" of general cake-making principles, as opposed to blind following of a list of specific ingredients, which might not indicate ANY familiarity with the fundamentals of good cake-making?