On the reproducibility of the recipes: an introduction
This thing, in the picture above, should have been a clafoutis. For some reason it turned more as an apple loaf. Still good eh, but this dessert had definitely nothing to do with a clafoutis. A clafoutis is a sort of pudding, soft and indulgent. The one I made was not at all like that!
Probably, the same happened to you: not being able to reproduce a recipe. And you ask yourself: “why? I pedantically follow the recipe…”
Reproducing the results is a well-known problem in science. The issue is so significant that, often, reproducibility criteria must be established. A pity that culinary results can’t be quantified ;) Quantifying recipes’ results can really be the last frontier of molecular gastronomy…
I bet a Sacher that more or less everyone experienced the frustrating situation of failing a recipe. But why? Well, sometimes recipes are not detailed enough or properly tested. Even the most validated recipes might reserve surprises: maybe you used a different flour or eggs of different dimensions…not to mention ovens! The variability from oven to oven can be significant and I suspect it has been responsible of my clafoutis failure.
Even by using ingredients and oven of the same brand, we will still have a individual variability…the well-known “hand” of the cook :)
So, do we have to to resign ourself to those cooking shortcomings? No, not really…there are strategies to minimize bad surprises. But this is another story that deserve a dedicated post! Meanwhile, I have to take my revenge with the clafoutis! :)