alt Hacker NewsInteresting. Could you give an example? The only example I could think of is when one is making a big ball of something and needs to cover the surface with another ingredient or preparation then it would scale as ^2/3.
Interesting. Could you give an example? The only example I could think of is when one is making a big ball of something and needs to cover the surface with another ingredient or preparation then it would scale as ^2/3.
In general seasoning (or saucing) anything solid is more about exposed surface area than mass, and this depends on things like cut sizes, evaporation shrinking, and god knows what other factors. It doesn't scale with simple math, because there are all sorts of other factors involved that complicate this (surface texture just being one).
It is also all moot because ingredients (especially spices) have massive variance in potency, sweetness, bitterness, sourness, etc., so recipes are only ever a guideline. I.e. if you double a spice that is twice / half as potent as expected, you can get an unpalatable / bland dish, and IMO factors between 0.25 to 4.00 are extremely common for plenty of ingredients. So you always just need to taste and adjust accordingly. This is also ignoring that certain ingredients can vary in multiple dimensions (e.g. a lemon that is a lot sweeter than expected but less sour, and so simple scaling of the lemon alone can't get you want want: you need to reach for white sugar and/or citric acid to get your desired pH and sweetness).
It is also a fantasy that all flavour concentrations are perceived linearly anyway (and this is especially the case for acidity / sour / pH generally, but also spiciness in e.g. ginger, pepper, capsaicin).