My grandma's famous pie crust recipe failed me at a big family picnic

I was at my cousin's place in Columbus last summer, trying to make my grandma's apple pie for about 20 people. The recipe says to use exactly 1 cup of ice water, but the dough just turned into a sticky mess. I realized she must have used a different kind of flour back in the day. I had to add almost another full cup of flour to get it right, which made me late for the picnic. Everyone still liked the pie, but it was not the same flaky crust I remember. Has anyone else had to change an old recipe because the ingredients are different now?

3 comments

3 Comments

carr.jennifer1mo ago

My aunt's biscuit recipe from the 70s is like that. She wrote "shortening" but the stuff in the blue can today is totally different. I have to use half butter and half of the modern shortening or they're just greasy rocks. It's frustrating because you feel like you're messing up a memory.

schmidt.reese1mo ago

Right? @carr.jennifer is onto something, it's like our grandmas were baking with magic pixie dust and we're stuck with the regular grocery store stuff.

gonzalez.vera23d ago

My grandma's banana bread recipe from the 60s calls for "1 cup of salad oil" - and I tried that with modern canola oil and it came out like a sponge. Turns out, back then "salad oil" was basically a lighter, more liquidy blend, not the thick stuff we buy now. So now I swap in half melted butter and half sunflower oil, and it's closer but still not the same. It's like the food science changed right under our noses, and nobody told us the old stuff didn't exist anymore. I wonder what else we're just plain missing out on because the ingredients got reformulated.