To mix food materials in a circular motion*
When you open a cookbook, do you know what to do when you read the phrase "cream the butter?" How about "stir to combine?" I like to think that the vast majority of you out there know what to do when you come across those terms. It appears that in 1949, the Home Economics Department at the University of Kansas didn't believe that young, newly married housewives knew what to do with those terms. In order to combat cooking ignorance (and ensure that the freshly returned GIs got a balanced, home cooked dinner) they produced a short film called Cooking Terms and What They Mean.
In the film, Margie and Tim Blake are just back from their honeymoon. Tim heads off to work in the morning and Margie heads for the kitchen. She wanders around for a moment, gently stroking all the new appliances and furniture, before pulling out a cookbook, so that she can determine what to make for Tim's dinner. She settles on chocolate cake and promptly screws up the recipe, all because she didn't know that the term "cream the butter" meant to "work it with an instrument until it becomes soft and smooth." Luckily for her, a disembodied voice from above tell her how to proceed and she is able to make another cake for Tim's dinner (hopefully that's not all she makes) without him ever knowing.
*The title was taken from the film's definition on how to stir.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-28-2008 @ 2:56PM
jpalfood said...
Maybe for readers here at SlashF, it's understandable, but for many people these days, the language of cooking is at least partly incomprehensible. I've had 50-year old women asking me for suggestions on how to learn to cook, and younger ones who knew nothing about how to do anything beyond a microwave. One of the basic requirements for any cookbook aimed at beginners is how well they handle the truly simple stuff, like how to crack and separate an egg and how to beat the whites.
It's nice to hear that the Greatest Generation had the same degree of un-knowledge.
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3-31-2008 @ 6:21PM
Mathi said...
Wow. That was really great, but in my mind I was seeing them 20 years later after just eating cake for dinner for all that time....
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