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B2 — THE OBSERVER & BAKER CITY HERALD
TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 2022
Why older recipes are out of date
By DANIEL NEMAN
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
It was ridiculous. I
couldn’t lift the package of
chicken breasts without a
winch.
There were only three
breasts in the package
— and if you want to be
technical, it was only a
breast and a half. Yet the
thing weighed about three
pounds.
Three pounds is, tech-
nically, the size of an
entire fryer chicken.
Fryers can be as small as
2-½ pounds (or as large
as 4-½ pounds). We can
assume that these partic-
ular breasts came from
a roaster, but still. The
breasts were huge, and
that was without skin and
bones.
There is nothing wrong
with that, as far as it goes.
More food means more
people can be fed and,
with luck, more leftovers.
The problem comes when
you are trying to cook to a
recipe.
I was on this particular
hunt for chicken recently
when I was going to make
Chicken Kiev. I was using
a recipe that dates back
to 1975.
It wasn’t that long ago
in the grand scheme of
things, but it was a dif-
ferent epoch in terms of
chicken evolution.
Chickens back then
were, for lack of a better
term, normal. They were
properly proportioned, at
least for a chicken. I mean,
chickens always look kind
of funny, but at least they
could stand up without
threatening to topple over.
When the great Craig
Claiborne said to use one
chicken breast per Chicken
Kiev, he meant one that
weighed perhaps 8 ounces,
not 16. Cooking his recipe
now means having to make
adjustments; I sliced the
breasts horizontally in
half to come up with the
proper size.
For the sake of science,
I tried to use a one-pound
breast in the recipe. It was
an utter failure. I couldn’t
pound the chicken thin
enough to use — Chicken
Kiev requires a thin fi llet
so it can be wrapped
around a mound of herbed
butter. When I fi nally got
the chicken thin enough,
it fell apart in shreds. And
still, there was twice as
much chicken as I needed.
I don’t blame the
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farmers. Farmers look
to fi ll a need. Americans
like chicken breasts much
more than legs and thighs,
so farmers, breeders and
geneticists try to supply
chickens with as much
breast as possible.
If it were only chickens,
I’d keep my grumbling to
myself. But a walk down
the aisles of any grocery
store reveals that food just
isn’t the same size.
Shallots used to be
almost a secret ingredient
used only by those in the
know. When they weren’t
popular, they were more or
less the size of a dried fi g.
But now, there are
more and more people
in the know, resulting in
increased demand for shal-
lots. Agricultural science
has responded, and now
shallots are twice as big as
they used to be.
Again, there is nothing
inherently wrong with that.
They still taste the same,
you just get more shallot
per shallot.
But if you see a recipe
from more than a few
years ago calling for one
shallot, you’ll be much
happier if you cut one of
today’s monster shallots
in half.
At least chicken breasts
and shallots are getting
bigger. Everything else
is getting smaller, for
obvious economic reasons.
Cans of vegetables
and fruit have contained
14 or 14-½ fl uid ounces
for so long that it feels
normal now. But those are
odd numbers, or at least
unusual, so I looked up
pictures of old cans. Sure
enough, they all started
out at 16 ounces. Of course
they did.
Candy bars are a partic-
ularly annoying example.
The prices naturally keep
going up, but the 3 Mus-
keteers bar of my youth
that weighed 2.06 ounces
now weighs 1.92 ounces.
The Hershey’s bar that was
formerly 1.875 ounces (I
assume it was originally 2
ounces) now checks in at
1.55 ounces. Kit Kat bars,
which started out at 1-1/4
ounces, now weigh 1 ½
ounces.
OK, I did not see that
one coming.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images-TNS
Chickens roam away from a shed following a rainstorm at the Nu
Sunrise Farms on March 15, 2022, in Griffi n, Georgia.
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