In 2009, Cook’s Illustrated founder Christopher Kimball wrote a eulogy for Gourmet, the glossy Condé Nast magazine that was being shuttered after nearly seven decades. The publication had been a home for people who valued culinary expertise, wrote Kimball—a place with “respect for those who had earned the chops, as it were, who had a lifetime of good breeding and experience in order to stand at the cultural helm.” In its place, Kimball saw a food culture overrun by “a million instant pundits” promoting slapdash, amateur fare. “Google ‘broccoli casserole’ and make the first recipe you find,” he wrote. “I guarantee it will be disappointing.”
The first Google result for broccoli casserole (at least when I checked the other week, though the algorithm seems to change daily) is a dish by a home cook named Stacy M. Polcyn. “Awesome Broccoli-Cheese Casserole” calls for one can of condensed cream of mushroom soup; one cup of mayonnaise; three packages of frozen broccoli; 8 ounces of cheddar cheese; an egg; a quarter cup of chopped onion; then salt, pepper, and paprika to taste. Mix everything together, bake at 350. The dish has been given hundreds of five-star ratings from people who leave comments suggesting tweaks (“I added 1 teaspoon garlic salt”) and expressing their enthusiasm (“All I have to say is YUM!”). It is, of course, from Allrecipes.com.
In the world of online recipe aggregators, Allrecipes is distinctly unglamorous.While rival website Epicurious culls recipes from Bon Appétit and the now-defunct Gourmet, Allrecipes takes crowdsourced creations from home cooks and then writes them up in standardized form. In the era of the ornate food description, Allrecipes favors a house style shorn of ostentation. The site uses “stir” or “cook” instead of “sauté” (“because that’s a French word,” explains Esmee Williams, Allrecipes’ vice president of consumer and brand strategy). Sugar cookies are “easy.” Pancakes are “old fashioned.” Many, many dishes are “creamy.”
And at a time when readers of aspirational food websites are used to images of impossibly perfect dishes—each microgreen artfully placed by some tweezer-wielding stylist—Allrecipes offers amateur snaps of amateur meals. The site is awash with close-ups of sludgy-looking soups; photos of stuffed peppers that look like they’ve been captured in the harsh, unforgiving light of a public washroom; and shot after shot documenting the myriad ways that melted cheese can congeal. It is all, Kimball and his ilk would agree, extremely disappointing. It’s also perhaps the most accurate, democratic snapshot of American culinary desires.
Allrecipes is the most popular English-language food website in the world. According to ComScore, last December the site got almost 50 million visits, the biggest month by any food site ever. Thanks to its mastery of search engine optimization, the site’s recipes constantly appear near the top of Google search results. If you look for “lasagna recipes,” as I did the other day, you’ll immediately find “World’s Best Lasagna,” a recipe that has been one of the website’s most popular dishes for 15 years. The recipe (which makes a perfectly tasty lasagna) was viewed more than 6 million times last year alone and has received more than 11,000 five-star ratings. In an era of celebrity chefs and recipe-kit delivery services developed by experts, a pasta dish by a Dallas dad who describes his heritage as “entirely Anglo-Saxon” is quite possibly America’s most-cooked meal. (...)
The gap between the food we cook and the food we talk about has never been larger. Culturally, it’s the same gap that exists between The Americans—the brainy FX spy show that seems to have nearly as many internet recappers as viewers—and shows like the immensely popular and rarely discussed NCIS. Breathless blog posts about the latest food trends can feel like certain corners of music criticism, pre-poptimism, when writers would obsess over the latest postrock band that was using really interesting time signatures while ignoring the vast majority of music people listened to on the radio. The food at Allrecipes is the massively popular, not-worth-talking-about mainstream.
So, what are the meals that people are actually cooking in 2016? A look at the website’s “hall of fame”—recipes that have been highly rated thousands of times—offers a glimpse of the contemporary American palate.
by Nicholas Hune-Brown, Slate | Read more:
Image:artpustovit/Thinkstock
The first Google result for broccoli casserole (at least when I checked the other week, though the algorithm seems to change daily) is a dish by a home cook named Stacy M. Polcyn. “Awesome Broccoli-Cheese Casserole” calls for one can of condensed cream of mushroom soup; one cup of mayonnaise; three packages of frozen broccoli; 8 ounces of cheddar cheese; an egg; a quarter cup of chopped onion; then salt, pepper, and paprika to taste. Mix everything together, bake at 350. The dish has been given hundreds of five-star ratings from people who leave comments suggesting tweaks (“I added 1 teaspoon garlic salt”) and expressing their enthusiasm (“All I have to say is YUM!”). It is, of course, from Allrecipes.com.In the world of online recipe aggregators, Allrecipes is distinctly unglamorous.While rival website Epicurious culls recipes from Bon Appétit and the now-defunct Gourmet, Allrecipes takes crowdsourced creations from home cooks and then writes them up in standardized form. In the era of the ornate food description, Allrecipes favors a house style shorn of ostentation. The site uses “stir” or “cook” instead of “sauté” (“because that’s a French word,” explains Esmee Williams, Allrecipes’ vice president of consumer and brand strategy). Sugar cookies are “easy.” Pancakes are “old fashioned.” Many, many dishes are “creamy.”
And at a time when readers of aspirational food websites are used to images of impossibly perfect dishes—each microgreen artfully placed by some tweezer-wielding stylist—Allrecipes offers amateur snaps of amateur meals. The site is awash with close-ups of sludgy-looking soups; photos of stuffed peppers that look like they’ve been captured in the harsh, unforgiving light of a public washroom; and shot after shot documenting the myriad ways that melted cheese can congeal. It is all, Kimball and his ilk would agree, extremely disappointing. It’s also perhaps the most accurate, democratic snapshot of American culinary desires.
Allrecipes is the most popular English-language food website in the world. According to ComScore, last December the site got almost 50 million visits, the biggest month by any food site ever. Thanks to its mastery of search engine optimization, the site’s recipes constantly appear near the top of Google search results. If you look for “lasagna recipes,” as I did the other day, you’ll immediately find “World’s Best Lasagna,” a recipe that has been one of the website’s most popular dishes for 15 years. The recipe (which makes a perfectly tasty lasagna) was viewed more than 6 million times last year alone and has received more than 11,000 five-star ratings. In an era of celebrity chefs and recipe-kit delivery services developed by experts, a pasta dish by a Dallas dad who describes his heritage as “entirely Anglo-Saxon” is quite possibly America’s most-cooked meal. (...)
The gap between the food we cook and the food we talk about has never been larger. Culturally, it’s the same gap that exists between The Americans—the brainy FX spy show that seems to have nearly as many internet recappers as viewers—and shows like the immensely popular and rarely discussed NCIS. Breathless blog posts about the latest food trends can feel like certain corners of music criticism, pre-poptimism, when writers would obsess over the latest postrock band that was using really interesting time signatures while ignoring the vast majority of music people listened to on the radio. The food at Allrecipes is the massively popular, not-worth-talking-about mainstream.
So, what are the meals that people are actually cooking in 2016? A look at the website’s “hall of fame”—recipes that have been highly rated thousands of times—offers a glimpse of the contemporary American palate.
by Nicholas Hune-Brown, Slate | Read more:
Image:artpustovit/Thinkstock
