My grandma's apple pie recipe TOTALLY bombed at the family reunion last Sunday

I swear I followed her handwritten card from 1982 to the letter but the crust came out like cardboard and the filling was a soupy mess. My aunt brought up my crust failure like 5 times and then said her store-bought pie was better. Has anyone else had a family recipe just decide to stop working after years of it being perfect?

3 comments

3 Comments

kellys786d ago

Your aunt was probably right tbh. My Nana's meatball recipe "stopped working" too but I realized I'd been skimping on the fresh herbs and using dried ones instead because I was lazy. Store bought stuff is consistent because factories control everything, those old recipes were written assuming people still had grandma's specific shrinking oven temps and flour brands that literally don't exist anymore.

jake9866d ago

That line about "flour brands that literally don't exist anymore" hit me hard lol. It's not even just cooking, I've noticed the same thing with how I fix stuff around the house. My dad taught me how to patch drywall with this specific brand of spackle that went out of business in 2008, and now the new stuff doesn't set the same way. Feels like half the instructions we grew up with are basically useless because the whole foundation they were built on has quietly disappeared.

ellis.susan6d ago

My grandpa was a carpenter and he always used this specific type of shellac that came in a can with a rooster on it. That company folded back in the 90s and I swear nothing else gives that same warm glow on woodwork. I tried a modern polyurethane once and it looked like plastic on the trim, had to sand it all off and start over. People keep saying "just follow the directions" but the directions were written for products that turned into ghosts years ago.