Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking
by Michael Ruhlman
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Book Summary Information
Author: Michael RuhlmanEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2009-04-07
ISBN: 1416566112
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Scribner
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9781416566113
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
Book Reviews of Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking
Book Review: An important concept, but not much depth
Summary: 2 Stars
Have you ever doubled or halved a recipe? Have you ever successfully added an extra ingredient to a recipe to "spice it up" or give it a different flavor without changing the basic recipe? Have you ever thrown together some soup or made up some oil-and-vinegar dressing by adding "a pinch of this, a handful of that, a lot of this, and maybe about twice as much of that," and then repeated the same approximate amounts again?
Congratulations -- you've learned 95% of what you can learn from this book. Move along.
The basic idea of this book, which you can find out from the numerous other (mostly glowing) reviews is that cooking and baking are based on ratios of ingredients. If you didn't realize that from following a few recipes, you can do the same thing this book does by finding a recipe that works and then doubling, tripling, or halving all the quantities. Often it works. (Actually, in baking, it often doesn't work if you make a particularly large or small batch, usually due to problems with leavening agents, but nevermind -- that's already more advanced than this book usually is.) Moreover, if you've never tried this, you can actually modify good recipes by adding or removing a flavor ingredient. So, go ahead -- got a good butter cookie recipe in a cookbook? Try adding some lavender flowers. You'll get lavender butter cookies. Go crazy and double it, and you'll get twice as many cookies -- amazing! Or, do you have a good white bread recipe that you use? Try adding some herbs or some dried fruit or whatever -- you'll get bread with stuff in it. That's basically what this book is about.
I guess this book is meaningful to a certain type of person who only follows recipes religiously and never varies them, or who never noticed that that new pancake recipe you're about to try uses twice as much milk per cup of flour compared to every other pancake recipe you've ever made. But I think for most people, this is common sense. You can add a little bit of X and vary a recipe, and if you see something weird compared to every other recipe you've ever used, you're probably going to end up with something different.
There are a couple other good points this book makes. For example, measuring by weight is generally a good idea, particularly in baking. Most people who have read any other good cookbooks specializing in cake-making or bread-baking already have heard that. (Ruhlman is a little inconsistent about when he uses weight instead of volume measurements; sometimes, for things often done in small amounts, volume would be easier.)
And the table of ratios is useful. In fact, if you could buy that separately, I'd say that'd be worth a few bucks right there. But only a few bucks, because the table only gives a selection of possible ratios, and the ratios that are there are only rough approximations to get you into the ballpark. For example, bread is a weight ratio of 5 parts flour to 3 parts water (with a little salt and yeast), so the book tells us. Well, that's a good general guideline. But if you want to make stiff dough (e.g., for bagels), you'll want a ratio closer to 2:1. If you want a slack dough (e.g., for ciabatta or focaccia), you'll want something closer to 5:4. That's a HUGE range of ratios and huge range of different types of bread dough. And all of this says nothing about the type of flour used (all-purpose versus bread versus high gluten versus whole wheat, etc. all could require significant adjustment to a ratio). Even the humidity and room temperature can greatly change the way bread dough behaves, and the baker has to take that into account.
One could say the same for most of the ratios given -- they are not magical or correct in every circumstance, nor are they even the best starting off point for many dishes if you want a particular variant. Many of them give a sense of exactness that is undeserved -- vinaigrette and mayonnaise, for example, can be made with a large variety of ingredient ratios and still be successful, often depending on other ingredients and desired consistency and flavor.
Moreover, each of these types of bread dough requires different handling procedures. That is really where the "ratio" argument falls apart. Cooking and baking are about ratios, but in a larger sense they're about FORMULAS. That is, you have a ratio of ingredients, but you combine things in certain ways (using different mixing techniques, timing, etc.), and then you prepare them by cooking them in certain ways (at certain temperatures, with certain timing, perhaps adding or changing things at various times, etc.). A ratio tells you very little if you know nothing about the rest of the formula and the techniques required to prepare a dish. If "ratio" was the only thing needed, recipes would only consist of lists of ingredients with no instructions.
That's not to say that the ratio is useless. In fact, it's the way people used to remember recipes. They are particularly important for successful baking using leavening, where ingredient ratios determine the success of the chemical changes; generally most other cooking is more forgiving. My mother still can recite baking recipes for cakes, icing, biscuits, etc. this way. My grandmother probably knew 4-5 times as many recipes by heart in the same way. But these only work when you know the rest of the technique, and even then, they are generally only guidelines that don't always produce stellar results without careful tweaking. Otherwise, you always get a successful -- but generally mediocre -- result, which is also true of this book's ratios.
People make a big deal out of the idea of varying a recipe, or knowing that by adding more of X or subtracting Y, your batter will turn from pancake batter into crepes or into biscuits. That's fun to know, but it doesn't actually help in the kitchen very much, particularly since changing one thing into another usually involves significant changes to preparation. Certain professional cookbooks that discuss the theory of building a recipe will provide more insight than a simple chart of ratios (with minimal instruction) can. If Ruhlman really wanted to make this part useful, he would provide some more charts for each of the ratios that show what happens as you vary each ingredient. What happens if there is less liquid in your pancake batter, for example? Well, the batter will be stiffer, which means thicker pancakes, which might be useful if you want large, thick diner-style pancakes, but you'll have to lower the heat in the pan to cook them. If you add more liquid, the opposite applies. Vary too much, and you'll need to play with baking soda/powder.
Other charts could be devoted to the discussion of adding other common ingredient types, and the way the ratios (as well as the technique) require adjustment. For example, if you enrich a bread dough with oil, milk, and/or eggs, you'll need to decrease the water content, perhaps raise the yeast content (or modify rising time), and lower the baking temperature while lengthening the baking time. (Ruhlman, if you use these ideas for your next book, please give me a footnote!)
And a final set of charts could be troubleshooting -- you try to vary a recipe or a new recipe from your favorite book doesn't turn out? Why not? Well, it could be that the ratios are off -- Ruhlman could point out that the most useful aspect of basic ratios for professional cooks is not actually to develop recipes, but rather to serve as guidelines to see why a divergence from a ratio doesn't work in a particular case.
Yes, these ratios could be immensely useful in the kitchen if they went beyond the basics. But, of course, such charts would be boring, and most people don't want to buy a book full of charts. So instead we're left with pages and pages of sometimes insightful and sometime rambling prose that are essentially annotations, explanations, and corrections to those master ratios that are supposed to be so important. But the annotations, explanations, and corrections are what makes one a good cook. The ratio by itself is meaningless and almost useless. The infinite variety that Ruhlman promises is most successful when you know how to alter a formula or how to correct for a problem.
People compare this to cooking as "engineering," but an engineering textbook would be filled with these charts and equations to help one derive a correct formula and ratio for a given situation. For some things, such equations do exist in research done for professional cooking and in food science, and certainly there are plenty of tables and charts in such articles and books that give more information on varying ratios than is possible in prose. Most people wouldn't want that, but that's what an "engineering approach" to cooking would actually be. This isn't it.
In the end, it's a good idea, but the basic idea is only enough to keep you occupied for a few weeks of cooking. After that, the more useful thing to do is to start noticing how other recipes in other books draw on or diverge from these ratios and why. You can find good recipes and vary them yourself. Or buy some cookbooks that tell you about the theory behind cooking that goes beyond basic ratios. But you don't need "Ratio" to tell you these things. It appears to be inspirational for a lot of people, but the basic ideas are simple, and I've already told you them here. Now go out and play with your own recipes -- you don't need Ruhlman's permission.
Two stars -- one for a generally good idea that people have forgotten about simple ratios in cooking, and one for the useful abbreviated chart. I would have given three stars, since there are more insights, but the poor organization of the writing and the many typographical errors make it undeserving.
Summary of Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking
WHEN YOU KNOW A CULINARY RATIO, IT'S NOT LIKE KNOWING A SINGLE RECIPE, IT'S INSTANTLY KNOWING A THOUSAND.Why spend time sorting through the millions of cookie recipes available in books, magazines, and on the Internet? Isn't it easier just to remember 1-2-3? That's the ratio of ingredients that always make a basic, delicious cookie dough: 1 part sugar, 2 parts fat, and 3 parts flour. From there, add anything you want -- chocolate, lemon and orange zest, nuts, poppy seeds, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, almond extract, or peanut butter, to name a few favorite additions. Replace white sugar with brown for a darker, chewier cookie. Add baking powder and/or eggs for a lighter, airier texture.
RATIOS ARE THE STARTING POINT FROM WHICH A THOUSAND VARIATIONS BEGIN.
Ratios are the simple proportions of one ingredient to another. Biscuit dough is 3 : 1 : 2 -- or 3 parts flour, 1 part fat, and 2 parts liquid. This ratio is the beginning of many variations, and because the biscuit takes sweet and savory flavors with equal grace, you can top it with whipped cream and strawberries or sausage gravy. Vinaigrette is 3 : 1, or 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar, and is one of the most useful sauces imaginable, giving everything from grilled meats and fish to steamed vegetables or lettuces intense flavor.
Cooking with ratios will unchain you from recipes and set you free. With thirty-three ratios and suggestions for enticing variations, Ratio is the truth ofcooking: basic preparations that teach us how the fundamental ingredients of the kitchen -- water, flour, butter and oils, milk and cream, and eggs -- work. Change the ratio and bread dough becomes pasta dough, cakes become muffins become popovers become crepes.
As the culinary world fills up with overly complicated recipes and never-ending ingredient lists, Michael Ruhlman blasts through the surplus of information and delivers this innovative, straightforward book that cuts to the core of cooking. Ratio provides one of the greatest kitchen lessons there is -- and it makes the cooking easier and more satisfying than ever.
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