When I was a kid, back in the '50s, it seemed that everything cooked in an oven needed a temperature of 350 degrees. Now recipes call for 400, 425 or even hotter. What has changed that necessitates hotter ovens?
Obviously you are eating more frozen pizza then before.
Most things I make still cook around 350.
350 is marked on my oven dial, so the kids know where to point it when I tell them to turn on the oven.
I can only think of a few things that I ever cook at higher temps, mostly frozen pizza or french fries. Junk food frozen stuff, basically, never any homemade cakes or casseroles or roasts.
Our new stove has a digital temperature setting. When you turn it on, it starts at 350. Seems likely that number was chosen because it’s the one used most often.
I have to agree with Panache45. My daughter was making something and told me it was going to cook at 400. I told her to check again; nothing much is cooked at 400 because it’s too hot. Of course she was right. A lot of the stuff she cooks is in a hot oven, and every time she turns it on she kids me about nothing cooking in a hot oven. She doesn’t do frozen pizza or junk food, either. I think one was muffins, and I can’t remember the other stuff she cooks that require 400, but there is more than I ever thought.
Same here - press [COOK] [START] and it comes on at a default of 350. For anything else, you have to key in the temp before pressing [START]
Microwave dinners seem to change the directions every 5 years or so. Used to be everything was on high, then it was high for part and medium/50% for part (or vice versa) now they seem to be back to high the whole time again, but with taking it out and rearranging it in the middle, then letting it sit in the microwave a while after it’s done.
Everything also has the paranoid “dur check with a thermometer before eating so you can’t sue us if you underdid it and get sick” disclaimer on it. Fuck that noise. Stuff like whole turkeys or roasts get thermometers, not Banquet’s salsbury steak. But I wouldn’t be surprised if this “make sure it’s [whatever the temperature they say it’s supposed to be these days]” thing was part of why oven temps are higher than they might’ve been a few decades ago.
There’s probably a marketing factor for pre-packaged foods. At higher tempertures things cook faster, and people probably prefer that. But I remember way back that frozen chicken pot pies were cooked at higher temperatures. 350 is the default temperature. Above that foods can char and smoke easily. Also, plastic containers couldn’t take the higher temps when everything began to switch from foil for microwaves.
Maybe it’s more creativity in cooking? (Sorry, I didn’t live through that decade, but I don’t typically hear wonderful things about 50s-style cooking.) 350 is good for dense but fairly homogenous things, like casseroles, which were pretty popular back then, no?
FWIW, the two recipes I use the most (both from Cook’s Illustr.) are Skillet Roasted Chicken (oven starts at 425 F) and Almost-No-Knead Bread (oven starts at a whopping 500 F). I actually can’t remember the last time I set my oven to 350 but then again, with only two people in the house - both with small appetites and an aversion to leftovers - I do a lot of cooking in the toaster oven, and I guess I use that @ 350 sometimes, for things like baked fish fillets.
TBG, I learned that for any frozen TV dinner, the instructions need to be modified by dropping a minute or two from the cook time and/or dropping the heat to 80 %. Otherwise, the mashed potatoes come out crusty and overdone at the edges. (And I’ve never had anything but piping hot, thoroughly cooked meat even with that type of modification.)
Microwave times can vary depending on your model of microwave. Most, or at least a lot of, TV dinners will say somewhere on the package what wattage microwave the instructions are designed for. Sounds like yours might be a bit more powerful than the norm.
I roast a lot of vegetables and such, at 450 or so. People used to cook a lot more boringly and either boil the crap out of things or cook at 350 until, you know, hot.
I did a course in a French restaurant, and everything was cooked at 190C, which is 400F. They just left the ovens on at that temperature and meat, vegetables, quiches, breads and other baked goods, etc. all went in at the same temperature.
That probably doesn’t have anything to do with it, but it surprised me.
Cooks have gotten smarter about cooking. The science of cooking keeps advancing.
We’ve learned that keeping beef at between 100° and 120°F maximizes tenderness. We’ve quantified how to make the most of the Maillard reaction. So if one wants to make a tender, tasty piece of roast beef, we know now to brown the exterior, and then let the interior rise gently in temperature. These techniques were previously known to high-end chefs (maybe without the science of why it works); now, the home chef has easy access to the knowledge.
Most baking still uses ovens in the 325° to 350°F range, but now one can find articles saying exactly why that temperature works. (I’ve read them in Cook’s Illustrated, though the website doesn’t go into the same depth as the magazine in explaining why).
Actually, 190C is 374F - about halfway between 350 and 400.