What is the meaning of proportion in cooking?

Answer 1

Let us say we are baking a pie with 2 parts water, five parts flour an half a part salt.

We can now easily calculate how much water and salt to add depending on how much flour we add, or how much water and flour to add depending on the amount of salt - you get the deal.

This kind of "proportions" can be used on regular recipes where you decide one basic amount and use it throughout the rest of the recipe.

An example is this recipe of pancakes

• 600g (5 cups) flour -- 5 parts flour
• Pinch of salt -- a pinch of salt
• 750ml (3 cups) milk -- 3 parts milk
• 2 eggs -- 2 parts egg
• 60g butter -- a bit of fat

To double the amount of pancakes made we double the parts, to quadruple the amount of pancakes you quadruple the parts.

Answer 2

Generally speaking - yes. But you will need to pay attention to the size of the baking tin. If doubling a cake recipe, for example, you will need to bake two cakes. If you double or halve a recipe in order to match the size of baking tin that you have then you must expect the baking time to be longer or shorter accordingly - so don't just rely on the original cooking time but use other ways of assessing when the cake is done.

If you are increasing a recipe by 3 times, 4 times or more and it contains eggs you may need to reduce the total number of eggs to avoid the batter becoming too liquid. Again, let experience be your guide.

Or if your question means using proportions like 1/2 a cup of milk, 2 cups flour etc rather than accurate measurements then that is perfectly acceptable. In fact in the days before every household had a set of kitchen scales it was the way baking was most often done with perfect results. It is a much quicker way of collating ingredients, too. But you must be careful to use a cup of the same size (or the same cup) when measuring each of the ingredients.

Answer 3

In cooking, proportion is used for relative sizes and measures. for example, to make a cake you may need three cups of flour and four eggs, then to make a cake twice the size you would need six cups and eight eggs. the proportion of eggs to flour is the same even though the quantities have doubled.

Answer 4

The amounts of how much ingredient is going into your food/ measurements.