No flavor?
December 26, 2021 2:14 PM Subscribe
Why does every comment on a recipe say it was "bland"?
Lately I've been noticing that a lot of recipes are reviewed by commenters as being "bland" and that they had to double or triple the seasonings used. I'm only a novice cook, but I've only ever had a few things come out that way, and I usually will follow the recipe fairly closely. Has anyone else found this or am I just experiencing confirmation bias?
Lately I've been noticing that a lot of recipes are reviewed by commenters as being "bland" and that they had to double or triple the seasonings used. I'm only a novice cook, but I've only ever had a few things come out that way, and I usually will follow the recipe fairly closely. Has anyone else found this or am I just experiencing confirmation bias?
- Covid
- Spices in their pantry are old and stale (maybe this is even worse in the pandemic since fewer people are idly browsing the spice aisles)
- Absolutely must leave some kind of unpleasant comment but lacks imagination
- Smokers
- People who eat a ton of salt and anything less than a ton tastes wrong
- Ditto, but spicy
- Mis-measurers
posted by Lyn Never at 2:22 PM on December 26, 2021 [47 favorites]
- Spices in their pantry are old and stale (maybe this is even worse in the pandemic since fewer people are idly browsing the spice aisles)
- Absolutely must leave some kind of unpleasant comment but lacks imagination
- Smokers
- People who eat a ton of salt and anything less than a ton tastes wrong
- Ditto, but spicy
- Mis-measurers
posted by Lyn Never at 2:22 PM on December 26, 2021 [47 favorites]
I used to head up a major Canadian recipe site and this article from The Toast remains the best summary.
posted by warriorqueen at 2:25 PM on December 26, 2021 [47 favorites]
posted by warriorqueen at 2:25 PM on December 26, 2021 [47 favorites]
People eat out so much they think the fatty salt bombs you get in restaurants is how food is supposed to taste. Also because they are eating out more they are exposed to a wider range of spices, herbs and food "heat" than they may have previously been used to making home cooked food without all the spices in, or stale spices or spices used incorrectly taste blander than expected.
posted by wwax at 2:38 PM on December 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by wwax at 2:38 PM on December 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
If it involves garlic, many people will automatically double or triple the number of cloves suggested in any given recipe because they want more flavor. Also, cloves vary in size and one head of garlic can vary in intensity from another. So, often the ones who comment about blandness have not upped the garlic, have used smaller cloves, or just milder garlic than the writer and others.
posted by soelo at 2:40 PM on December 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by soelo at 2:40 PM on December 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
If these are recent comments, the pandemic is the first time many have tried cooking from scratch, so bland may be in comparison to oversalted flavor-blasted restaurant or packaged food.
If these are higher-end sites, food snobs always try to outdo each other in how much they love garlic and spice. Like unlike the plebes who do not know how to season their food, I, a food intellectual, a rebel, one might say, use twelve ghost peppers and four heads of garlic in MY version.
posted by kapers at 2:50 PM on December 26, 2021 [13 favorites]
If these are higher-end sites, food snobs always try to outdo each other in how much they love garlic and spice. Like unlike the plebes who do not know how to season their food, I, a food intellectual, a rebel, one might say, use twelve ghost peppers and four heads of garlic in MY version.
posted by kapers at 2:50 PM on December 26, 2021 [13 favorites]
Sometimes food other people like is just... bland. A few years ago I was trying to eat more plant-based for health reasons, so I searched the internet for tasty vegan recipes. I can't tell you the number of times I'd find a recipe that the writer described as "absolutely delicious... I take this to parties and my omnivore friends eat it up!" And then I'd make the recipe and it would just be completely lacking in flavor. And all I could think was "dang, your omni friends must be super polite!"
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 2:57 PM on December 26, 2021 [29 favorites]
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 2:57 PM on December 26, 2021 [29 favorites]
I think a lot of family-oriented cooking sites offer pretty bland food for a pretty bland and narrow White Western palate (and for children). And then some of the more sophisticated sites rely on better quality ingredients and nuanced flavors and a lot of readers don’t have either of those either. But I agree that in some cases it’s city-based cooks that eat a lot of strongly flavored ethnic takeout foods.
posted by vunder at 3:00 PM on December 26, 2021 [12 favorites]
posted by vunder at 3:00 PM on December 26, 2021 [12 favorites]
IMO: I like my food at home to taste like restaurant food (and I’m picky about restaurants), and have the health privilege to be able to do that and not suffer terribly. Butter, salt at every stage, double the requested garlic or ginger or most spices. I think 90% of white American home cooks make horribly bland (mostly just under-salted) food, not knowing what “season to taste” means, thinking “black pepper” is something that comes desiccated and in a shaker. It’s way easier for recipe sites to err on the side of caution, cater to that 90%, avoiding the “inedibly salty” comments, with the remaining 10% knowing what to do to modify recipes.
Serious Eats is always my go-to because their cooks and editors have a similar palate to me. A random food blog that caters to midwestern suburbanites? Probably not.
posted by supercres at 3:12 PM on December 26, 2021 [14 favorites]
Serious Eats is always my go-to because their cooks and editors have a similar palate to me. A random food blog that caters to midwestern suburbanites? Probably not.
posted by supercres at 3:12 PM on December 26, 2021 [14 favorites]
Another substitution fail is replacing the butter / eggs / cream / animal fat with skim milk / oat milk / canola oil / whatever and wondering why it doesn’t taste good; bland is the best word they have for that.
posted by momus_window at 3:14 PM on December 26, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by momus_window at 3:14 PM on December 26, 2021 [8 favorites]
The answer is, it depends? I will adjust seasonings as I go. Spices are not like baking ingredient measurements. You can get away with adding more (or less). So many times I’ll read a recipe that calls for a pinch of salt where I know a punch is better suited.
Also, this is why online recipes are so hit and miss. Without knowing how much it’s been tested, I will compare ratios across several different versions to make sure I’m within an acceptable range. If I’m looking to make something completely new to me, I’ll search out the Cook’s Illustrated version since I know they test the everloving crap out of all their recipes.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 3:17 PM on December 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
Also, this is why online recipes are so hit and miss. Without knowing how much it’s been tested, I will compare ratios across several different versions to make sure I’m within an acceptable range. If I’m looking to make something completely new to me, I’ll search out the Cook’s Illustrated version since I know they test the everloving crap out of all their recipes.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 3:17 PM on December 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
I feel like most modern recipes leave out the most important part: "taste; adjust seasoning".
I also think that for many people in the US "bland" means "not enough salt".
That being said, I almost always have to add more spices, herbs, or chiles to whatever I'm making. It's never occurred to me to say something about it in the comments of a recipe because I taste and adjust as I go. That's just part of cooking.
posted by oneirodynia at 3:21 PM on December 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
I also think that for many people in the US "bland" means "not enough salt".
That being said, I almost always have to add more spices, herbs, or chiles to whatever I'm making. It's never occurred to me to say something about it in the comments of a recipe because I taste and adjust as I go. That's just part of cooking.
posted by oneirodynia at 3:21 PM on December 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
I agree it could be for a lot of the reasons listed above.
Another could be if they used poor-quality ingredients, especially if the recipe relies a lot on the flavor of ingredients rather than salt and seasoning. An extreme version of this would be using the pallid tomatoes from Kroger in a recipe that calls for fresh tomatoes, but a lot of grocery store produce is pretty bland, these days.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 3:22 PM on December 26, 2021 [6 favorites]
Another could be if they used poor-quality ingredients, especially if the recipe relies a lot on the flavor of ingredients rather than salt and seasoning. An extreme version of this would be using the pallid tomatoes from Kroger in a recipe that calls for fresh tomatoes, but a lot of grocery store produce is pretty bland, these days.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 3:22 PM on December 26, 2021 [6 favorites]
Of course it could be a number of reasons (as noted above) but I am another person who regularly finds the recipes geared toward the average American (OP's profile says they're in PA) to be "bland." I can appreciate subtle flavors, but I generally prefer strong flavors, be it garlic, chili, ginger, etc.
If you've noticed the complaint of "bland" has increased over the years, this is perhaps due to more Americans eating relatively authentic food from cuisines that aren't shy about spice, thanks to the increase in a diversity of restaurants, even in relatively small cities/towns.
posted by coffeecat at 3:37 PM on December 26, 2021 [2 favorites]
If you've noticed the complaint of "bland" has increased over the years, this is perhaps due to more Americans eating relatively authentic food from cuisines that aren't shy about spice, thanks to the increase in a diversity of restaurants, even in relatively small cities/towns.
posted by coffeecat at 3:37 PM on December 26, 2021 [2 favorites]
Fashion plays a role and so does low-quality produce/meat/etc. It's fashionable to say that things are underseasoned even when one might want to taste, say, the flavor of a really good ingredient - if you have home-made bread and good butter, for instance, well, that's bland and boring etc etc. As a result, you get a lot of people stupidly overlooking good dishes because they can't imagine that anything could taste good if it has subtle flavors.
And then, of course, a lot of the time you don't have home-made bread and good butter, or a good-quality apple or really fresh vegetables. Like, a lot of that seventies/California cuisine was created on the assumption that you'd make simple dishes using really good ingredients because you wanted to taste, say, a really good melon or really fresh greens. And then if you can't get those really good ingredients the dishes don't taste as good.
When I've visited or lived in places with incredible fresh produce widely available, I really didn't feel like I needed a lot of seasoning. For instance, I worked in coastal southern China for a couple of years quite a while ago now, and at the time (no idea how it is now) there was a huge truck garden market right near where I lived and the fruit, vegetables and poultry were really good. Traditional food from those regions isn't spicy. It's salty, oily and sweet, and I've always assumed that this is because the climate produces such outstanding ingredients.
There is a hidden advantage, though - I've been doing really well, baking-for-people-wise, with the forgotten cakes and cookies of the forties and fifties. People are often relieved to be able to eat a simple, high quality lemon cake or chocolate cookie instead of yet another dry, sour pomegranate goji berry semolina cake studded with pink peppercorns or whatever.
posted by Frowner at 3:51 PM on December 26, 2021 [29 favorites]
And then, of course, a lot of the time you don't have home-made bread and good butter, or a good-quality apple or really fresh vegetables. Like, a lot of that seventies/California cuisine was created on the assumption that you'd make simple dishes using really good ingredients because you wanted to taste, say, a really good melon or really fresh greens. And then if you can't get those really good ingredients the dishes don't taste as good.
When I've visited or lived in places with incredible fresh produce widely available, I really didn't feel like I needed a lot of seasoning. For instance, I worked in coastal southern China for a couple of years quite a while ago now, and at the time (no idea how it is now) there was a huge truck garden market right near where I lived and the fruit, vegetables and poultry were really good. Traditional food from those regions isn't spicy. It's salty, oily and sweet, and I've always assumed that this is because the climate produces such outstanding ingredients.
There is a hidden advantage, though - I've been doing really well, baking-for-people-wise, with the forgotten cakes and cookies of the forties and fifties. People are often relieved to be able to eat a simple, high quality lemon cake or chocolate cookie instead of yet another dry, sour pomegranate goji berry semolina cake studded with pink peppercorns or whatever.
posted by Frowner at 3:51 PM on December 26, 2021 [29 favorites]
Could you share one or two of these recipes? It's be interesting to see what the "more fat, more salt, more spice club" (of which I'm a member) thinks of them.
posted by soylent00FF00 at 4:09 PM on December 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by soylent00FF00 at 4:09 PM on December 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
I, a food intellectual, a rebel, one might say, use twelve ghost peppers and four heads of garlic in MY version
Bland. Needs more salt and butter.
Seriously, though, if this is a recent thing then I think phunniemee has it.
People are often relieved to be able to eat a simple, high quality lemon cake or chocolate cookie instead of yet another dry, sour pomegranate goji berry semolina cake studded with pink peppercorns or whatever.
Similarly, a good vanilla ice cream made with fresh ingredients and real vanilla is almost impossible to beat, the increasingly desperate flavour combinations offered by commercial ice cream manufacturers trying hard to stand out in a crowded marketplace notwithstanding.
posted by flabdablet at 4:20 PM on December 26, 2021 [6 favorites]
Bland. Needs more salt and butter.
Seriously, though, if this is a recent thing then I think phunniemee has it.
People are often relieved to be able to eat a simple, high quality lemon cake or chocolate cookie instead of yet another dry, sour pomegranate goji berry semolina cake studded with pink peppercorns or whatever.
Similarly, a good vanilla ice cream made with fresh ingredients and real vanilla is almost impossible to beat, the increasingly desperate flavour combinations offered by commercial ice cream manufacturers trying hard to stand out in a crowded marketplace notwithstanding.
posted by flabdablet at 4:20 PM on December 26, 2021 [6 favorites]
i think some of this depends on what kind of recipe we're talking about. When i've adapted recipes for like an indian curry or tagine, I've often had to increase the spices. now, maybe my spices are just not "high enough quality" (although they always are recently purchased/relatively fresh), but i also just think a lot of these recipes ere on the side of a milder palate than what I want from my indian food or thai food or whatever.
i think there's a big difference between wanting a curry to have bold flavors vs saying that a freshly baked ciabatta with some olive oil is "bland". there are definitely plenty of simple recipes where less is more. (Like the vanilla ice cream example above.) but where I usually see reviews saying a recipe is bland is more the former than the latter, but i guess it depends on the web site maybe.
posted by litera scripta manet at 5:16 PM on December 26, 2021 [2 favorites]
i think there's a big difference between wanting a curry to have bold flavors vs saying that a freshly baked ciabatta with some olive oil is "bland". there are definitely plenty of simple recipes where less is more. (Like the vanilla ice cream example above.) but where I usually see reviews saying a recipe is bland is more the former than the latter, but i guess it depends on the web site maybe.
posted by litera scripta manet at 5:16 PM on December 26, 2021 [2 favorites]
- Independent food blogging, at a certain level, rewards constant content creation and pretty photos more strongly than it does rigorous recipe testing. A lot more people look at a recipe than make it, and testing is sometimes a logical corner to cut for people who are trying to be a lifestyle magazine on their own or with a small-business-sized staff.
- Quantity measurements can create havoc. Produce is not standard. Everybody's idea of a medium onion is a little different. Once we get up to, say, three carrots or five potatoes, we could be dealing with serious discrepancies in amounts, and spreading the specified seasoning over a lot more matter could create blandness.
- Volume measurements can also cause problems. People eyeball their chopping and dicing, pack more or less into volume measurement than intended, and if you go too much in either wrong direction from what a recipe intends, depending on what ingredient we're talking about, you introduce the same potential for under-seasoning.
- Some sites (BA comes to mind) specify salt and pepper in the ingredient lists but not the amount, and some people genuinely aren't comfortable enough in the kitchen to be familiar with adjusting seasoning, nor to realize how much more it might take than they initially assume.
(Weights are the most accurate way to go to avoid measurement pitfalls, but a lot of people in the U.S. don't have a kitchen scale or don't find it natural to use. I just put up a recipe for white chocolate ginger cashew brittle, and as I try to do, I worked out U.S. volume equivalents for the gram measurements I prefer, but I gave up in despair on the crushed cashews and stuck with grams only. For the recipe to reliably work, it was only going to be possible to do it accurately in grams and specify how small to crush them, along with a caution that if they were crushed too large or too small the syrup wouldn't spread.)
posted by jocelmeow at 5:36 PM on December 26, 2021 [8 favorites]
- Quantity measurements can create havoc. Produce is not standard. Everybody's idea of a medium onion is a little different. Once we get up to, say, three carrots or five potatoes, we could be dealing with serious discrepancies in amounts, and spreading the specified seasoning over a lot more matter could create blandness.
- Volume measurements can also cause problems. People eyeball their chopping and dicing, pack more or less into volume measurement than intended, and if you go too much in either wrong direction from what a recipe intends, depending on what ingredient we're talking about, you introduce the same potential for under-seasoning.
- Some sites (BA comes to mind) specify salt and pepper in the ingredient lists but not the amount, and some people genuinely aren't comfortable enough in the kitchen to be familiar with adjusting seasoning, nor to realize how much more it might take than they initially assume.
(Weights are the most accurate way to go to avoid measurement pitfalls, but a lot of people in the U.S. don't have a kitchen scale or don't find it natural to use. I just put up a recipe for white chocolate ginger cashew brittle, and as I try to do, I worked out U.S. volume equivalents for the gram measurements I prefer, but I gave up in despair on the crushed cashews and stuck with grams only. For the recipe to reliably work, it was only going to be possible to do it accurately in grams and specify how small to crush them, along with a caution that if they were crushed too large or too small the syrup wouldn't spread.)
posted by jocelmeow at 5:36 PM on December 26, 2021 [8 favorites]
I would also guess this is partly because of the "old spices" issue, especially if it's a recipe that uses a less frequently used spice. (How many people pick up a jar of curry powder or smoked paprika or something for one specific recipe and then have it linger in their spice rack for years?) Anecdotally, I was making gingerbread cookies the other week, and unearthed an old, expired jar of Penzey's ground ginger, along with an unexpired one. I don't have a particularly strong sense of smell, but there was a palpable difference in scent between old/expired jar and the fresher jar, and that's with Penzey's, which is decent quality in the first place. (I tossed the old jar and used the fresher one, of course.)
But I would agree with others than under-salting is probably what's leading to a lot of "bland" comments. I've often noticed people scoffing in the comments of Blue Apron recipes over how Blue Apron tends to include "season to taste" with basically every step, which suggests to me that people really aren't used to doing that level of seasoning. Which I totally get! I have definitely fucked up and over-salted using this method, and sometimes "season to taste" does in fact mean "skip the salt in this step" based on your taste. There's also the issue of using table salt vs kosher salt vs sea salt, where the measurements can really differ a lot. But in general I feel like appropriate salting is one of those things that you get a better and better instinct for the more you cook, so it makes sense to me that many less experienced cooks often fuck it up by under-salting, because after all, even inexperienced cooks know that you can fix undersalting but you can't really fix over-salting that easily.
posted by yasaman at 5:52 PM on December 26, 2021 [4 favorites]
But I would agree with others than under-salting is probably what's leading to a lot of "bland" comments. I've often noticed people scoffing in the comments of Blue Apron recipes over how Blue Apron tends to include "season to taste" with basically every step, which suggests to me that people really aren't used to doing that level of seasoning. Which I totally get! I have definitely fucked up and over-salted using this method, and sometimes "season to taste" does in fact mean "skip the salt in this step" based on your taste. There's also the issue of using table salt vs kosher salt vs sea salt, where the measurements can really differ a lot. But in general I feel like appropriate salting is one of those things that you get a better and better instinct for the more you cook, so it makes sense to me that many less experienced cooks often fuck it up by under-salting, because after all, even inexperienced cooks know that you can fix undersalting but you can't really fix over-salting that easily.
posted by yasaman at 5:52 PM on December 26, 2021 [4 favorites]
To second jocelmeow's point regarding quantity vs weight, I was astonished when I started weighing my vegetables like onions, carrots, and celery. I have recipes that call for "1 large yellow onion (12 ounces)". It turns out the onions I consider large weigh about half that. That's seriously underflavoring your food. Ditto for the carrots and celery.
I agree with the other folks in this thread who said there has been a tendency in recipes to underseason to accommodate some palates. Cook's Illustrated was notorious for this 15 years ago or so, although they seem to have gotten better as of late.
On preview, yasaman's point about the differences between salts is a very good one.
posted by mollweide at 5:56 PM on December 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
I agree with the other folks in this thread who said there has been a tendency in recipes to underseason to accommodate some palates. Cook's Illustrated was notorious for this 15 years ago or so, although they seem to have gotten better as of late.
On preview, yasaman's point about the differences between salts is a very good one.
posted by mollweide at 5:56 PM on December 26, 2021 [3 favorites]
Even within salt, there is variance in saltiness - for instance, Diamond Crystal kosher salt is roughly half the density of Morton kosher salt, and hence, is roughly half as salty when measured by volume. Recipes really should specify salt by weight to compensate for this, but very few people in the world (and definitely not in the USA) are willing/able to weigh small amounts of ingredients.
Many of the recipes I use originate eventually with professional chefs, who tend to season entirely by taste. When the recipes are made, they will estimate the amount of salt they used. The estimate is usually both inaccurate, and will vary depending on what type of salt is used by the person cooking the recipe.
For what it's worth, most professional chefs use Diamond Crystal kosher salt. Hence, most recipes are most accurately replicated with Diamond Crystal kosher salt.
In addition to salt, there are regional variances in ingredients. For instance, onions tend to be smaller globally than in the USA. In the USA, onions on the east coast are smaller than those on the west coast.
posted by saeculorum at 6:24 PM on December 26, 2021 [2 favorites]
Many of the recipes I use originate eventually with professional chefs, who tend to season entirely by taste. When the recipes are made, they will estimate the amount of salt they used. The estimate is usually both inaccurate, and will vary depending on what type of salt is used by the person cooking the recipe.
For what it's worth, most professional chefs use Diamond Crystal kosher salt. Hence, most recipes are most accurately replicated with Diamond Crystal kosher salt.
In addition to salt, there are regional variances in ingredients. For instance, onions tend to be smaller globally than in the USA. In the USA, onions on the east coast are smaller than those on the west coast.
posted by saeculorum at 6:24 PM on December 26, 2021 [2 favorites]
I think this is confirmation bias. I looked at about 50 recipes this week for assorted holiday projects. None of them had a remarkable number of comments about blandness. One actually stood out because it had many complaints about an overwhelming taste of nutmeg. However, I do wonder about covid. For the next few recipe searches I do, I now plan to see whether I can sort comments by recency. It may prove to be interesting.
posted by kutsushita nyanko at 7:51 PM on December 26, 2021
posted by kutsushita nyanko at 7:51 PM on December 26, 2021
I used to tech edit recipes a million years ago, for people you have heard of; that would include things like figuring out if the seasoning listed would be a reasonable amount. I suspect that nobody is tech editing recipes anymore, and that it's left up to the writer to do their own. If this is a difference you've noticed over the past decade or so, it could have something to do with it -- there isn't a second (or third etc) pair of eyes making sure the recipe is as accurate as it could be.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:56 PM on December 26, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:56 PM on December 26, 2021 [4 favorites]
It's just a bell curve thing. People are all over the place taste-wise. Internet recipes can be accessed from anywhere in the world, by readers of all ages, etc. So there will be a lot of mismatch of expectations and taste. Basically, just look at the "bland!" person as someone who hasn't found the right recipe source for them yet.
posted by michaelh at 10:27 PM on December 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by michaelh at 10:27 PM on December 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
I'm from the UK and find a lot of US recipes sites tend to under season spicy food, especially that from South Asia. I'm not sure if the writer is catering to local palettes or to the availability of ingredients from the average American supermarket.
posted by Faff at 10:59 PM on December 26, 2021
posted by Faff at 10:59 PM on December 26, 2021
Apart from what has already been said, it can be surprisingly non-obvious what specific flavour is missing from a dish.
I'm a self-taught cook (from childhood) and consider myself to be "reasonably good at cooking", but it took me a weirdly long time to pinpoint exactly what kind of flavour absence means "not enough salt", and even longer to identify "not enough sugar" (in a savoury dish) and "not enough sour".
If you haven't had that epiphany, you may be able to taste that a dish is wrong, but not be able to articulate why.
(But yeah, I've also had such mouth-curlingly overflavoured commercially produced food that I think some people just have a very different palate.)
posted by confluency at 11:49 PM on December 26, 2021 [4 favorites]
I'm a self-taught cook (from childhood) and consider myself to be "reasonably good at cooking", but it took me a weirdly long time to pinpoint exactly what kind of flavour absence means "not enough salt", and even longer to identify "not enough sugar" (in a savoury dish) and "not enough sour".
If you haven't had that epiphany, you may be able to taste that a dish is wrong, but not be able to articulate why.
(But yeah, I've also had such mouth-curlingly overflavoured commercially produced food that I think some people just have a very different palate.)
posted by confluency at 11:49 PM on December 26, 2021 [4 favorites]
I remember seeing this for years but I've always just chalked it up to the Allrecipes problem - what gets the 5-star up-voted review isn't actually the original recipe, it's the original recipe plus whatever modifications the cook made to it. So you get comments like, this was amazing, I replaced the beef with chicken, added bell peppers, doubled the garlic, and added smoked paprika, 5 stars. And the recipe this person made is not the same recipe that is listed on the top of the page! But they wanted to give credit for the inspiration. And if enough people do it you get pages of "I followed first_reviewer's changes to the..., and it was great!"
posted by Lady Li at 12:25 AM on December 27, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by Lady Li at 12:25 AM on December 27, 2021 [5 favorites]
Now that I think about it though, I bet the different ingredients sizes are a real factor. One chicken breast can absolutely range from half a pound to nearly a pound. Potatoes, similar. I mentioned those instead of onions and garlic because if you double the mass of chicken and potatoes and keep the same amount of salt, it won't be enough. Kosher versus table salt is another thing for sure. And pulling out the old oregano that's been in the pantry for 2 years will not be the same as a bottle from the pantry of someone who uses it every week and has to buy more several times a year.
posted by Lady Li at 12:28 AM on December 27, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Lady Li at 12:28 AM on December 27, 2021 [2 favorites]
There is a lot of explaining in the answers here, but really, it's the Yankee Candle COVID phenomena. Candles don't smell, and that's data-supported; obviously, food will also have no taste.
posted by DarlingBri at 12:40 AM on December 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by DarlingBri at 12:40 AM on December 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
Sometimes food other people like is just... bland.
You may just have a palate closer to that of the person who wrote the recipe. People taste things differently! I know that if I want something to be spicy *for me* I will probably need to add something. I also know better than to serve others a recipe that is spicy enough for me without a warning, and if cooking for a group I’d dial it back several notches.
Setting aside some foodie snobbery about this, even before COVID ruined so many tastebuds you could characterize a huge chunk of the Anglosphere’s palate as fairly conservative. To the point that there are a ton of jokes about it in popular culture. Recipes geared toward that palate are going to go light on a lot of things or skip them entirely, lest someone complain that they reeked of garlic for a week or couldn’t eat it because that tsp of cayenne was too spicy.
Regularly cooking for a large group of people you learn quickly how many things you need to leave out or go a little easier on. Combine that with the most common commenter on recipe blogs being some form of Karen who will substitute something completely different or leave something crucial out and then complain.
You end up with recipes that will trend toward being bland for e.g. someone like me who has built up a (wholly unnecessary) tolerance for e.g. capsaicin, and a whole bunch of complaints from people who don’t taste things as they go and either follow recipes far too closely or not enough.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:12 AM on December 27, 2021
You may just have a palate closer to that of the person who wrote the recipe. People taste things differently! I know that if I want something to be spicy *for me* I will probably need to add something. I also know better than to serve others a recipe that is spicy enough for me without a warning, and if cooking for a group I’d dial it back several notches.
Setting aside some foodie snobbery about this, even before COVID ruined so many tastebuds you could characterize a huge chunk of the Anglosphere’s palate as fairly conservative. To the point that there are a ton of jokes about it in popular culture. Recipes geared toward that palate are going to go light on a lot of things or skip them entirely, lest someone complain that they reeked of garlic for a week or couldn’t eat it because that tsp of cayenne was too spicy.
Regularly cooking for a large group of people you learn quickly how many things you need to leave out or go a little easier on. Combine that with the most common commenter on recipe blogs being some form of Karen who will substitute something completely different or leave something crucial out and then complain.
You end up with recipes that will trend toward being bland for e.g. someone like me who has built up a (wholly unnecessary) tolerance for e.g. capsaicin, and a whole bunch of complaints from people who don’t taste things as they go and either follow recipes far too closely or not enough.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:12 AM on December 27, 2021
This is totally a historic trend in Europe and the US and Canada. My grandmother's recipes called for a great deal less spice and sugar than my mother's recipes, and my mother's recipes are way less sweet or spicy than recipes I find nowadays. A lot of their recipes had a lot more salt than ours do because salt was the preservative in much food, and they were actually concerned with reducing it, so hams, salt beef and salt fish were all boiled to make them edible.
My grandmother's cookbook had a recipe for scalloped potatoes in white sauce with minimal fat used to make the white sauce. It would have been a totally gluey starch concoction. I'd be surprised if any establishment higher on the scale than a for profit prison would serve that nowadays, including hospitals.
There was an early best seller cookbook in the US - I think it was the first edition of the Fanny Farmer Cookbook, but don't recall now - that hugely increased the amount of sugar in the recipes and that caught on and changed the way Americans baked and the amount of sugar they expected in their starch dishes. They even started adding sugar to porridge which previously had only had salt added. I have recipes for English baking from that period which calls for a tablespoon of sugar and makes 24 muffins. For awhile US baking was much sweeter than British before the British caught up, but that is why we have the unsweetened English muffin and English pancake, and the sweet US muffin and the highly risen sweet American flapjack. Pretty well everything in the line of baking that we eat now that is sweet - doughnuts, muffins, etc. had an early version where no sugar was added beyond what was necessary to feed the yeast. Back then if they wanted to make the cakes fancy they add eggs and butter and if they really wanted to go to town and impress the guests they iced it. Icing a cake, of course was a type of preservative. The hard sugar shell on the outside meant it didn't dry out and go stale as quickly.
This is not to say that everything they ate was bland and boring. But they provided side dishes called relishes, to make up the difference so that individual people could dress them up to give them more flavour. Relishes were usually based on vinegar - the cheapest readily available strong flavour, combined with whatever made them spicy or savoury. In my grandmother's family the spice was usually mustard and I still have a cabinet full of metal powdered mustard tins, which now contain nails and screws. Ketchup was a relish, as was curry, and the very many types of pickles. In many poor working class families relishes were only provided for the working men so that they would eat more, which was necessary to keep up their strength.
Tom Sawyer was able to trade for and get an apple core, which was considered worth getting, because an apple back then was enough of a treat that you gave the apple core away to a favoured friend. Raisins added to a pudding made it something children looked forward to as the highlight of the day.
The trend in food over my lifetime has also gone more and more spicy, salty and strong. The difference between peppermint chewing gum then and now is astronomical. It now literally makes my mouth raw like eating a too strong curry does. But I don't put it down to commercial cooking changes so much as human nature to acclimatize, and to want something nicer for a change until they acclimatize to that and want to improve it again somehow.
One reason for our tendency to want things strong and more heavily flavoured is that our taste buds atrophy at an appalling rate throughout our lives, as do our receptors for scent. When we are born we start with about 30,000 receptors. By the time we are young adults that has been reduced to one third. That is why children go for bland comfort food and we learn to love them in childhood, and why they are resistant to eating vegetables. To a child bitter things are more than three times as bitter. The bitterness receptors are the first to dwindle. The decline in number of taste buds continue as we get older and we become much more capable of developing a taste for fine wine and such like delicacies, things that to a child simply taste vile. Imagine your wine as being three times as strong and you will understand why kids can't understand why we drink it.
After age sixty or so, there is another precipitous decline in the remaining taste buds. Gen Y is at the peak of their purchasing powers and most likely to have the income to influence the market and be able to afford upscale restaurants. They are also wondering why oranges no longer taste like oranges and have nothing left but tartness, and can't tell artificial cinnamon from real cinnamon anymore. They are also no longer adventurous, another trend that occurs with age, so they want the same old things, only still tasting like they used to...
The older a population skews, the more bland they are going to find their food. The ratio of births to deaths is dropping, but when we make up the difference with immigration we are getting established adults as immigrants. In 1905 a graph of the population by age started highest and went diagonally downward almost in a straight line. In 2020 there were no younger cohorts larger than the average. People with a lot fewer than 10,000 tastebuds are now the vast majority.
So combine factors - the lowering of quality in spices, acclimatization, changes in perception caused by Covid damage, chemo treatment damage, damage from inhaling cleaning products, change in taste perception caused by obesity, coffee's ability to temporarily suppress some nuances of taste, loss of taste receptors due to age... There are a lot of different factors but they all contribute to us finding our food more bland.
posted by Jane the Brown at 8:56 AM on December 27, 2021 [17 favorites]
My grandmother's cookbook had a recipe for scalloped potatoes in white sauce with minimal fat used to make the white sauce. It would have been a totally gluey starch concoction. I'd be surprised if any establishment higher on the scale than a for profit prison would serve that nowadays, including hospitals.
There was an early best seller cookbook in the US - I think it was the first edition of the Fanny Farmer Cookbook, but don't recall now - that hugely increased the amount of sugar in the recipes and that caught on and changed the way Americans baked and the amount of sugar they expected in their starch dishes. They even started adding sugar to porridge which previously had only had salt added. I have recipes for English baking from that period which calls for a tablespoon of sugar and makes 24 muffins. For awhile US baking was much sweeter than British before the British caught up, but that is why we have the unsweetened English muffin and English pancake, and the sweet US muffin and the highly risen sweet American flapjack. Pretty well everything in the line of baking that we eat now that is sweet - doughnuts, muffins, etc. had an early version where no sugar was added beyond what was necessary to feed the yeast. Back then if they wanted to make the cakes fancy they add eggs and butter and if they really wanted to go to town and impress the guests they iced it. Icing a cake, of course was a type of preservative. The hard sugar shell on the outside meant it didn't dry out and go stale as quickly.
This is not to say that everything they ate was bland and boring. But they provided side dishes called relishes, to make up the difference so that individual people could dress them up to give them more flavour. Relishes were usually based on vinegar - the cheapest readily available strong flavour, combined with whatever made them spicy or savoury. In my grandmother's family the spice was usually mustard and I still have a cabinet full of metal powdered mustard tins, which now contain nails and screws. Ketchup was a relish, as was curry, and the very many types of pickles. In many poor working class families relishes were only provided for the working men so that they would eat more, which was necessary to keep up their strength.
Tom Sawyer was able to trade for and get an apple core, which was considered worth getting, because an apple back then was enough of a treat that you gave the apple core away to a favoured friend. Raisins added to a pudding made it something children looked forward to as the highlight of the day.
The trend in food over my lifetime has also gone more and more spicy, salty and strong. The difference between peppermint chewing gum then and now is astronomical. It now literally makes my mouth raw like eating a too strong curry does. But I don't put it down to commercial cooking changes so much as human nature to acclimatize, and to want something nicer for a change until they acclimatize to that and want to improve it again somehow.
One reason for our tendency to want things strong and more heavily flavoured is that our taste buds atrophy at an appalling rate throughout our lives, as do our receptors for scent. When we are born we start with about 30,000 receptors. By the time we are young adults that has been reduced to one third. That is why children go for bland comfort food and we learn to love them in childhood, and why they are resistant to eating vegetables. To a child bitter things are more than three times as bitter. The bitterness receptors are the first to dwindle. The decline in number of taste buds continue as we get older and we become much more capable of developing a taste for fine wine and such like delicacies, things that to a child simply taste vile. Imagine your wine as being three times as strong and you will understand why kids can't understand why we drink it.
After age sixty or so, there is another precipitous decline in the remaining taste buds. Gen Y is at the peak of their purchasing powers and most likely to have the income to influence the market and be able to afford upscale restaurants. They are also wondering why oranges no longer taste like oranges and have nothing left but tartness, and can't tell artificial cinnamon from real cinnamon anymore. They are also no longer adventurous, another trend that occurs with age, so they want the same old things, only still tasting like they used to...
The older a population skews, the more bland they are going to find their food. The ratio of births to deaths is dropping, but when we make up the difference with immigration we are getting established adults as immigrants. In 1905 a graph of the population by age started highest and went diagonally downward almost in a straight line. In 2020 there were no younger cohorts larger than the average. People with a lot fewer than 10,000 tastebuds are now the vast majority.
So combine factors - the lowering of quality in spices, acclimatization, changes in perception caused by Covid damage, chemo treatment damage, damage from inhaling cleaning products, change in taste perception caused by obesity, coffee's ability to temporarily suppress some nuances of taste, loss of taste receptors due to age... There are a lot of different factors but they all contribute to us finding our food more bland.
posted by Jane the Brown at 8:56 AM on December 27, 2021 [17 favorites]
I'm a self-taught cook (from childhood) and consider myself to be "reasonably good at cooking", but it took me a weirdly long time to pinpoint exactly what kind of flavour absence means "not enough salt", and even longer to identify "not enough sugar" (in a savoury dish) and "not enough sour".
If you haven't had that epiphany, you may be able to taste that a dish is wrong, but not be able to articulate why.
To this, I would add there is a large cohort of people who say "too bland" and reach for the salt and then it's "too salty". They should be reaching for an acid. And I would not be surprised if a lot of these people are saying "I don't have lemon (or lime) but I have everything else, so I'll make this recipe anyway." Or, "yuck. I'm not putting vinegar in my meal." The right amount of acid really does make all the other ingredients shine and can almost be imperceptible.
I think all the answers above all make very valid points, too.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 6:44 AM on December 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
If you haven't had that epiphany, you may be able to taste that a dish is wrong, but not be able to articulate why.
To this, I would add there is a large cohort of people who say "too bland" and reach for the salt and then it's "too salty". They should be reaching for an acid. And I would not be surprised if a lot of these people are saying "I don't have lemon (or lime) but I have everything else, so I'll make this recipe anyway." Or, "yuck. I'm not putting vinegar in my meal." The right amount of acid really does make all the other ingredients shine and can almost be imperceptible.
I think all the answers above all make very valid points, too.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 6:44 AM on December 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by phunniemee at 2:16 PM on December 26, 2021 [93 favorites]