My aunt called my great-grandma's tomato jam 'too sweet' and it made me realize we're losing the point

She said it was a 'cloying waste of good tomatoes' and that I should cut the sugar by half. I made it her way once and it was just a thin, sad sauce, nothing like the thick, spiced spread from the 1930s recipe card. The whole point was it used up a glut of late-summer Romas with a full three cups of sugar to preserve it properly. Has anyone else had a family recipe get 'fixed' into something totally wrong?

2 comments

2 Comments

mia72711d ago

Honestly, what is it with people trying to fix things that are already perfect? My grandma's gingerbread recipe got the same treatment from my sister-in-law, who swapped the molasses for agave syrup. It turned into this weird, cakey brick with no real flavor. I just make the original now and don't tell her when she comes over. Some recipes are a whole package, and messing with the sugar or fat wrecks the whole point.

nelson.gavin11d ago

That "cloying waste" line got me. My mom's cousin tried to "update" her lemon bar recipe by swapping in some fancy olive oil for butter. Said it was healthier. They came out of the pan like a greasy sponge that tasted like a salad. The whole point of a lemon bar is that shortbread crust, which just doesn't work without real butter. Some people don't get that the recipe is the whole thing, not just a list of parts you can swap.