Wife's got some bizarre cooking notions/beliefs

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jd_1138

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She's baking a bunch of holiday cookies. She has these old recipe cards handed down from her grandma/mom. She's a great baker, but some of her beliefs are kinda wonky. :)

She asked me to take out 2 pounds of butter, so I grabbed a box of Land O' Lakes (with the native American lady on the box) and a box of Giant Eagle store branded butter.

"You can't use 2 different brands! They have to be the same", she said. I replied: "they are both salted butter; it makes no functional difference. You can mix brands".

What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet;


Romeo and Juliet
 
The brand of butter doesn't matter, but glad to hear she's up and around and feeling well enough to bake, jd! That's the main thing - Merry Christmas!
 
"You can't use 2 different brands! They have to be the same", she said. I replied: "they are both salted butter; it makes no functional difference. You can mix brands".

Here's me.
"You can use 2 different brands! They just have to be the same size." I said. DH replied: "they are the same size but they need to be the same brand and size of tires for your car. You can't mix brands".

Well, I had no idea, I'm a cook, not a mechanic, Captain Kirk.
 
wife's got some bizarre cooking notions/beliefs

Huh? If I have butter, any pedigree doesn't matter. I have no problem mixing and matching.
 
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Well as far as I been told, American style butter has high moister contain then European style butter, so it can in rare cases when mix get a different result then you wanted.

How ever never ever mix the two Swedish brands of lactose free butter if you are making a savoury pie, because then you will have a lovely toffee flavoured crust to your meat pie and that is not on.
 
I'll play devil's advocate and agree with her. If you taste very carefully, you often can tell a difference between the house brand and a major dairy's butter. I think L-O-L and Cabot butters are purer tasting and have a smoother consistency. That being said, I'd still use them together if that's what I had.

jd, if I were you, I'd buy two Giant Eagle boxes of butter. Although I bet you could get the L-O-L brand at Marc's for less than the Giant Eagle butter would cost you.
 
Well, I don't know about mixing brands, but I certainly wouldn't be using salted butter, especially for Christmas baking.
 
I'll play devil's advocate and agree with her. If you taste very carefully, you often can tell a difference between the house brand and a major dairy's butter. I think L-O-L and Cabot butters are purer tasting and have a smoother consistency. That being said, I'd still use them together if that's what I had.

jd, if I were you, I'd buy two Giant Eagle boxes of butter. Although I bet you could get the L-O-L brand at Marc's for less than the Giant Eagle butter would cost you.

I doubt any minor flavor differences will be noticeable in baked goods.

Agree with med. I only buy unsalted butter.
 
I'll play devil's advocate and agree with her. If you taste very carefully, you often can tell a difference between the house brand and a major dairy's butter. I think L-O-L and Cabot butters are purer tasting and have a smoother consistency. That being said, I'd still use them together if that's what I had.

jd, if I were you, I'd buy two Giant Eagle boxes of butter. Although I bet you could get the L-O-L brand at Marc's for less than the Giant Eagle butter would cost you.


In point of fact, often house brand and "major dairy" brand butters are made in the same factory.

Same with milk.

Land o Lakes and Stop and Shop brand are (or used to be )the same here. Check the numbers on the packages f butter and containers of milk.

I wouldn't mix American and European butters because of the difference in fat content.

Mixing American butters -- especially salted butter -- won't make any difference in cookies, IMO
 
This thread reminds me of my mother. She was a Yankee transplanted in the South as a young wife and mother. Not sure if her beliefs were borne of being a northerner but she had some, I thought, strange ideas about food, not necessarily cooking.

She refused to eat wax (yellow) beans and white corn because beans were supposed to be green and corn had to be yellow. We were served red beets because yes, you guessed it, everyone knows beets are always red.

She considered, in her words, cornbread and buttermilk to be "peasant" food. I don't know where that came from because she came from a medium-type income family.

All I can think is that she missed lots of good things to eat.
 
I only use unsalted too. I have been known to combine Costco butter with local grocery store butter. It's all good.
 
Well, I have to back track on my words about unsalted butter. After thinking about it, there are recipes that I have for a Christmas cookie and a candy, and I'm sure I'm not the only one that has recipes like that, where you have to use margarine or it just doesn't come out right. I'd ALWAYS rather use unsalted butter and that's what we buy except for when I make those particular cookie or candy recipes. I've tried butter in both recipes and they just don't come out right, texture is wrong and they don't taste right. So I guess there is always an exception. I also suspect that the cookie recipe was written during the Depression as it came from my grandmother, and the candy in the early 70s when margarine was good and butter was bad.
 
Kinda sounds like DH, he's anal to the point of nauseating. I mean, to the point where he'll storm out of the kitchen. (yay!)

I remember one time I just bought pounds of active yeast at Costco (remember yeast goes bad) and he went out the same day and bought an expensive jar of Fleishman's yeast at Target. Because the recipe said so! The jar of Fleishman cost as much as the brick of yeast I bought at Costco and is happily sitting unopened in the back of my refrigerator.
 
I actually too do not like mixing brands. Don't even know if there is valid reason. It's just kind of uniformed to use the same stuff.
 

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