Language help needed!

[Luca Lazzari]

Hi friends, I found these lines in a recipe:
6 cups chicken broth, divided
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided

I can suppose that chicken broth divided could mean that you eliminate the fat from the top, after cooking, but I'm not sure. But what does it mean "olive oil divided"?
Pleeezze help your poor Italian friend...

 

[Claire]

Usually that means that early in the recipe you're going to use part of it, then use the rest of it later. For example, you might use 2 of the tablespoons of olive oil to saute something, then use the third to "dress" the dish and add flavor later.

 

[Luca Lazzari]

Thank you very much, Claire.

 

[Addie]

When you get down to the directions, you will see where it says, add two tablespoons, and later it will tell you what to do with the rest. If that is an American recipe, it should have been written better. A good recip should tell you what and how and also why.

 

[Soma]

good question, Luca! A few times I've been stumped by such instructions in a recipe, and found myself wondering things like: "how do you divide olive oil?"...(I know how to get the fat off the top of chicken soup (as in cooling it), but dividing olive oil seems much, much harder...teehee.

Have fun with your recipe!

 

[Claire]

There are two lines of thought on this. The Joy of Cooking, I think (correct me if I'm wrong) doesn't do an entire, full list of ingredients up front. More than once I've skimmed over a recipe and bought what I thought were all the ingredients. Then I get to the last line of the recipe and .... Oh, Shi##! I needed three tablespoons, not two, and I need to go back to the store. So, that three tablespoons, divided, up front, lets you know how much you're going to need at the end. Needless to say, I've learned to read the recipe down to the bitter end. But when I was in my early days of using "Joy", it would drive me crazy!

 

[Addie]

My first husband had the very first Joy. Irma wasn't a professional cook. She was a very rich woman who didn't know how to cook. She was bored and was looking for something to do. So she took up cooking and decided to write a cookbook as she was learning. Her directions in the first Joy left a lot to be desired. I was surprised that the editors let it go to press without correcting a lot of her errors or ommissions.

 

[Katie H]

There are two lines of thought on this. The Joy of Cooking, I think (correct me if I'm wrong) doesn't do an entire, full list of ingredients up front. More than once I've skimmed over a recipe and bought what I thought were all the ingredients. Then I get to the last line of the recipe and .... Oh, Shi##! I needed three tablespoons, not two, and I need to go back to the store. So, that three tablespoons, divided, up front, lets you know how much you're going to need at the end. Needless to say, I've learned to read the recipe down to the bitter end. But when I was in my early days of using "Joy", it would drive me crazy!

Claire, you've beautifully pointed out something Julia Child wrote about many, many, many years ago. She compiled a list of about 10 ways cooks can fail. High up in the list is that they do not read their recipes all the way through before beginning the preparation.

I learned that lesson in a different way when I took an advanced math class in high school. The instructor was a genius, and a saint, and had an awesome way of making a point.

One day he handed out a critical test and all of us, scared out of our wits we'd make a poor grade, immediately got to work calculating the 20 problems on the test. We sweat blood.

Question number 20 read, "Do not complete any of the previous 19 problems. Fold the page in half and return to the front."

Lesson learned.

 

[buckytom]

as has been mentioned - but just to put it another way, "divided" means divided by quantity. 6 cups of chicken broth should be seperated into 6 seperapte cups so you'll add them as needed.

as addie said, the reading through the recipe will tell you how to add the divided ingredients later.

 

[Merlot]

I learned that lesson in a different way when I took an advanced math class in high school. The instructor was a genius, and a saint, and had an awesome way of making a point.

One day he handed out a critical test and all of us, scared out of our wits we'd make a poor grade, immediately got to work calculating the 20 problems on the test. We sweat blood.

Question number 20 read, "Do not complete any of the previous 19 problems. Fold the page in half and return to the front."

Lesson learned.

I have been through that test. It has also been used in job interviews, team building exercises etc.

 

[jennyema]

as has been mentioned - but just to put it another way, "divided" means divided by quantity. 6 cups of chicken broth should be seperated into 6 seperapte cups so you'll add them as needed.

as addie said, the reading through the recipe will tell you how to add the divided ingredients later.

Actually, if you read through the recipe you might find that you need to add 3 cups twice or 4 cups once and 1 cup twice. I'd read through the recipe first. You likely don't have to have six one cup quantities at the ready.

"Divided" just means it's not added in all at once.

 

[Claire]

For a few months I was tutoring a 4th grader. If I only taught him one thing it was to read over the test, go back and answer all the question you absolutely know the answer. Then the ones you can figure out, then, finally, puzzle over the ones you don't know. Recipe reading is much like that.

 

[buckytom]

Actually, if you read through the recipe you might find that you need to add 3 cups twice or 4 cups once and 1 cup twice. I'd read through the recipe first. You likely don't have to have six one cup quantities at the ready.

"Divided" just means it's not added in all at once.

well, yeah, i was being very literal since the confusion was about whether divided meant a treatment of the ingredient besides a measure.

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

"Divided" just means it's not added in all at once.

Exactly! It means "Don't add this all at once because you'll be adding portions in two or more stages of the recipe," and "Warning: if you add this all at once you'll be making a big mistake!"