Re: cooking conundrum

James Harris wrote:
On 19 Oct, 17:11, Ben Pfaff <b...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I was baking bread this weekend and noticed that the Betty
Crocker directions for breadsticks included these directions
(paraphrasing):

Divide the dough into 12 equal parts. (Start by dividing
the dough in two equal parts, and then continuing
dividing pieces in two until you have 12 equal parts.)

I couldn't figure out how to make this work. Fortunately, I was
making focaccia, not breadsticks, so I didn't have to.

Has Betty Crocker gone off her rocker, or is there a way that
this can be done?

Well, I'd favour the 'gone off her rocker' interpretation. Either her
or the printer.

After dividing in two it's easiest to divide the parts in three next.
That's not hard to do by eye. It's almost as easy as dividing in two
so the instructions seem wrong.

Then each half is baked....

There is one way that sort of error could arise through a recipe
development process problem.

Suppose the the recipe originally used 8 pieces, so that it read "...
continuing dividing pieces in two until you have 8 equal parts.". At
that point the cooking method portion of the recipe had an undocumented,
unenforced constraint that the number of pieces must be an integer power
of two.

On review, the recipe writers found the pieces were a bit too large, and
changed "8" to "12" throughout.

The problem could have been prevented by better recipe development
process in many ways:

1. Don't use a method that imposes an unnecessary constraint. Tell the
reader to divide the dough into N equal pieces, without trying to
specify how it should be done. The reader would pick a convenient method
for the current value of N.

2. If you are going to specify a method that only works for integer
powers of two, document the fact and add an assertion: "If 12 is not an
integer power of two, write a letter to the authors pointing out the error."

3. Test the recipe using new cooks after each change, and requiring them
to relate everything they do to the words in the recipe.

Patricia
.

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