#6 Ratio

Ratio by Michael Ruhlman - Buy @ Amazon

Ratio
by Michael Ruhlman (2009)

Closeup of ratio wheel for batters and doughs. Pancake, popover, crepe, bread, pasta dough, and pie dough are represented by their proportions of flour, liquid, egg, sugar, and fat.

Ratings: Learn more
Quality: 3/5 – Good base recipes
Importance: 3/5 – Good reference
Difficulty: 2.5/5 – Moderate
Rarity: 1/5 – Common

Today’s Cookbook:
Yesterday we tried to learn everything about bread in cookbook #5 The Taste of Bread. My brain still hurts from that.

Today I sought refuge from those complex bread formulas among the friendly abstractions of ingredient ratios- the subject of today’s cookbook #6 Ratio by prolific food writer Michael Ruhlman.

Fragment of stock ratio wheel, showing proportions of bones, water, mirepoix, starch/protein for Slurry, Stock and Consomme.

Simple kitchen ratios
The point of this book is to memorize kitchen ratios- the author says you aren’t truly free until you have a mastery of a dish’s ratios and techniques. This book has a real DIY food math vibe and I found myself making hella notes throughout the entire thing.

The book presents helpful ratio wheels, reproduced in part here, that visualize the proportions for different consistencies among families of components. The author explains this as a continuum- showing that for doughs and batter, to go from a thick, elastic dough to a thin, delicate one- and even on to a pourable batter- is merely a matter of correct ingredient ratios between eggs, flour, liquid, and fat.

Complex ratio wheel for batters and doughs, showing Fat, Sugar, egg, liquid, and flour proportions.

For you memorizing pleasure, here are these handy ratios, listed in parts by weight:

• Bread: 5 flour : 4 water (+yeast, salt)
• Biscuit Dough: 3 flour, 1 fat, 2 liquid
• Cookie Dough: 1 sugar, 2 fat, 3 flour
• Pate a Choux: 2 water, 1 butter, 1 flour, 2 egg
• Pound Cake: 1 butter, 1 sugar, 1 egg, 1 flour (creaming)
• Sponge Cake: 1 egg, 1 sugar, 1 flour, 1 butter (foaming)
• Angel Food Cake: 3 egg whites, 3 sugar, 1 flour
• Muffin: 2 flour, 2 liquid, 1 egg, 1 butter
• Pancake: 2 liquid, 1 egg, 1/2 butter, 2 flour
• Fritter: 2 flour, 2 liquid, 1 egg
• Popover: 2 liquid, 1 egg, 1 flour
• Crepe: 1 liquid, 1 egg, 1/2 flour
• Stock: 3 water, 2 bones
• Consomme: 12 stock, 1 meat, 1 mirepoix, 1 egg white
• Roux: 3 flour, 2 fat
• Beurre Manie: 1 flour, 1 butter
• Slurry: 1 cornstarch, 1 water
• Sausage: 3 meat, 1 fat
• Sausage Seasoning: 60 meat, 1 salt
• Mousseline: 8 meat, 4 cream, 1 egg
• Brine: 20 water, 1 salt
• Mayonnaise: 20 oil, 1 liquid+yolk
• Vinaigrette: 3 oil, 1 vinegar
• Hollandaise: 5 butter, 1 yolk, 1 liquid
• Free-standing Custard: 2 liquid, 1 egg
• Creme Anglaise: 4 milk+cream, 1 yolk, 1 sugar
• Chocolate Ganache: 1 chocolate, 1 cream
• Caramel Sauce: 1 sugar, 1 cream

Formulas vs Ratios
I had to jump through so many hoops in cookbook #5 The Taste of Bread just to find a Bread Formula for Basic French Bread. Today’s book has a Bread Ratio, using the even simpler baker’s percentage of 60% flour weight:

Basic Bread Dough

• 100%: 1 kg flour
• 60%: 600 g water
• 3%: 30 g yeast
• 2%: 20 g salt

Professor Calvel’s “perfect” bread formula had less yeast (1.5%), more water (67%) and the same amount of salt (2%).

Overall, the tone of the ratio book is way more friendly junior high science teacher, with a look towards practical applications, compared to yesterday’s Bread Bible. #6 Ratio is definitely more accessible to beginning chefs, but it is still a lot of writing.

Conclusion: Great for improvising with “exact” recipes
This cookbook reaffirmed my belief that there isn’t just one right way of doing things. Even with the “classics”, it’s largely a matter of personal style how we adjust proportions of common ingredients. This makes improvisation accessible to even the most exact baking recipes.

As the author explains it, ratios are the definition of a dish while the recipe is the art. This book is very heavy on definition and not so heavy on the art. Variants for the basic ratio recipes are only presented in prose form.

I think this is a great book for cooks that want to improvise with exact recipes. I’d also recommend it to those that, like me, have an algorithmic mind and are compelled to strain the culinary arts through the flavorless sieve of mathematics.

Recipe: Improvising Creme Anglaise with Ratios

Ratio wheel for different custard consistencies- chocolate sauce, creme anglaise, free-standing custard, and caramel sauce- based on proportions of cream/liquid, egg, sugar, and chocolate.

The author provides us with a base recipe for this famous sauce which can be adjusted for consistency through varying the proportions of ingredients or through changing the cooking techniques (listed as variants after the recipe).

Creme Anglaise
Ratio by weight: 16 oz cream+milk : 4 oz yolk : 4 oz sugar

1 cup milk (use more to loosen) (8 oz)
1 cup cream (use more to thicken) (8 oz)
1 vanilla bean, split
1/2 cup sugar (4 oz)
7 egg yolks (use more to thicken) (4 oz)

1. Simmer milk+cream with vanilla bean in saucepan.
2. Turn off heat and let vanilla bean steep for 15 min. Scrape vanilla seeds into hot liquid.
3. Whisk sugar and yolks in a bowl for 30 seconds.
4. Heat milky liquid to simmer temperature. Pour slowly into yolk+sugar mixture, whisking the whole time.
5. Return mixture to saucepan and heat until sauce thickens to nappé.
6. Strain sauce into chilled bowl, rest in ice bath. Stir warm sauce until it chills. Cover and refrigerate.

Techniques used to thicken Creme Anglaise:

• Pastry cream: thickened with starch and cooked
• Ice cream: thickened by freezing and agitating
• Creme brulee: thickened by baking in a ramekin
• Custard sauce: thickened by simmering in saucepan

Memorizing and playing with this recipe’s ratio and techniques means I can always improvise an interesting vanilla-based dessert sauce- maybe mix in a fruit coulis that either thickens or thins the anglaise.