I want to see Nate make three more batches: one again with just basic ingredients, one with all brand ingredients, and a final one with only the four most notably different ingredients from this video.
I appreciate the fact that you weighted some of the ingredients and tried to explain. I switched to weighing a lot of my ingredients for baking a few years back and have noticed a difference. Especially with my bread making. Weighing really is better than using measuring cups.
I personally find weighing easier and quicker too. No need to faff around trying to level your ingredients in measuring cups and spoons lol. Plus, it's the only way to really get that consistency every time.
America is really the only place where people bake without weighing ingredients. It’s honestly a bit of a weird practice, especially if you are trying for consistency. With modern scales, weighing isn’t a hassle at all.
i think to further test this you should make the expensive batch, but replace each ingredient with the cheaper one. see if missing the ingredient makes the cookie worse, rather than seeing if adding it makes it better. maybe good for part three
This is a great follow up! Isolating each ingredient is definitely the best way to determine what makes the difference for better cookies but I agree with what others have said: 3 more batches should be a final comparison between brand, basic, and selective brand cookies!
I love this series of videos. Very similar to Barry Lewis’ cheap vs steep. I really enjoy the difference in approach from the two, the scientific approach of trying to define the actual better ingredients was interesting.
Big part of the Vanilla is that the Vanilla plant is actually a bit expensive, so Vanilla Extract is gonna be the expensive option, but the imitation/artificial vanilla is gonna be a lot cheaper. While chemically it's the same, how both are processed, environment they're in can make very subtle changes in the flavor.
While chocolate chips can vary drastically in quality, I think the ingredient people don't expect to make a difference is the brown sugar. I have cooked for enough decades now to know that what is often sold as brown sugar now is not what it was when those recipes were written. Light brown sugar used to be darker and more moist. So, for a better outcome use what is labeled as dark brown sugar. It makes a difference.
I figured, butter, the chips and brown sugar. We have seen a vast improvement in our cookies when we started to make homemade brown sugar. The cookie dough almost has a mousse like consistency, even after sitting in the fridge overnight.
I loved this Nate, the big one for me was butter, I've been thinking about changing buttter in a Christmas cookie recipe that I have made for years. Very interesting no one picked that out! Thank you:)
Even the same "quantity" is going to be controversial or at least complex for certain ingredients. Higher protein flours require more hydration to achieve the correct result, cheap butter has more water and less fat which ought to be accounted for in the recipe somewhere, salt crystal shape impacts volume measurement greatly but often too little to weigh accurately on a home scale.
As a meal prep and coffee enthusiast. I strongly support and encourage weighing your food instead of using a volumetric measurement. Thank you for not bowing to the crowd. Weight doesn’t change volumetric measurements do.
in a regular oven, its generally best to bake your cookies on the top shelf. So having two batches, on two different levels at the same time will yield two different texture results. best to do one batch at a time, at the same height in the oven. unless youre using a very high quality convection oven. the recipe breakdown is super solid! lots of fun! thanks man!
Hey Nate you could do a RUclips short showing a cup of flour compacted and then a cup of flour just fluffy and the weights between the two. showing that measuring a cup of flour by weight is a better form of measurement than by size.
I like the way you stick pretty close to scientific method. I want to do that sometime, but don’t have the time and patience unless it’s directly related to what I’m doing.
I love watching your BvB episodes. Me wife and I always try and predict what's the most important ingredient before you start your own taste testing. It's fun.
The salt matters based on grain size; I have separate cooking salt and cookie salt, 'cause coarse-grain cookie salt won't completely dissolve, so it leaves tiny tastable grains in the finished cookies.
I was so with you on the butter! Very interesting that it's brown sugar. I would also be curious to see browned butter vs. straight from the package, but that's kind of a different experiment. I learned I'll keep buying the store brand for most stuff, but I'll be upgrading my brown sugar next time!
Great series! I love brand versus basic. That said you are a brave scientist who is also a glutton for punishment. Eleven batches of cookies seems crazy but your pain is our gain. So thank you very much.
I'm not surprised about the chocolate chips, vanilla, and brown sugar. Brown sugar has molasses in it, making it more moist (chewier cookie), real vanilla vs. artificial vanilla makes a difference in flavour, and chocolate chips can make or break the recipe (the higher the cocoa, the more rich the flavour, BUT milk chocolate has more sugar in it so it makes the recipe sweeter). I would love to see this test done using lard substituted for butter and using different types of chocolate chips (Nestlé Toll House, Hershey's, Great Value, etc...) and milk chocolate vs. dark chocolate vs. white chips (or flavoured ones just for a challenge).
Alright now do a test with a control batch, a batch with all the control ingredients but with the flour, brown sugar, butter, vanilla and chocolate swapped for the better ingredients, and an expensive batch.
I'm not surprised the chocolate chips made a difference. I used to buy chocolate chips just for snacking and there was a big difference in quality in name brand vs store brand or generic brand. The cheaper brands texture was not as good, not as melty or creamy.
Man, I was literally just wanting this style of test earlier this week. So glad to get cookies from Nate. I think there are still a ton of ways to test the cookie (brown sugar brands - Asian, C&H, organic, etc, or melted vs browned vs normal butter). But this style even if difficult would be super interesting in other recipes too. Or maybe a Vegan vs NonVegan. From the get go we might think the vegan one isn't better, but in the name of science you have to assume both outcomes are possible. I know you try to stick closely to the same recipe, so maybe vegan eggs give you the replacement amount, vegan butter might be tougher. I know chemically they are different but it would be a fun experiment.
My guess were that brown sugar and butter would make a difference. Vanilla extract I was a bit curious about, but didn't think it would really matter. Flour, eggs, sugar, salt, baking soda and the rest I didn't think would make much of a difference. Well I got one right... ish... Brown sugar really varies in taste. It can be a deep musty taste or a light "springy" (?) taste or anything between. It wouldn't surprise me if you could find both cheap and expensive versions of both. Butter can also vary a lot, but I'm not sure how much that carries over in taste after it has been cooked. This time it doesn't seem like it made any noticeable difference. Per haps making a taste test of butter would be interesting. Make sandwiches using a few different brands of butter, fry pieces of bread in the same brands, perhaps bake cookies as a last test and see what differences your friends can taste if any. It would be a very narrow test, not necessarily one that could determine what butter is the best, but it could tell you just how important the brand is for the taste of a dish, and if it's worth the time to experiment with it.
This is a great idea. If you want to upscale this you could do this to another recipe. If you could afford then increase the person sample size then if you could determine which parameters will bring significant change in flavor using statistics.
The BRAND of salt will generally not make a difference, but the KIND of salt can. A teaspoon of granulated salt will weigh differently to a teaspoon of kosher salt due to the difference of the salt flake size. Most recipes are tested with kosher salt. The primary difference in something like a choc chip biscuit will be the dairy, the eggs (depending on the eggs themselves) or the chocolate. The darkness of the brown sugar will affect how caramelly it tastes, as dark brown sugar has more molasses in it than a light brown sugar. Vanilla WILL make a difference depending on whether you are using imitation vanilla or a proper vanilla extract/vanilla beans.
Noticed a difference on the flours... largely because I switched from bleached to unbleached a while ago and found it improved baking noticably, even when buying the store brand unbleached flour. I even prefer generic unbleached to name brand bleached flour. Not at all surprised by the sugar, either, I've been playing around with different sugars and sugar blends for a while (keep turbinado and caster sugar around standard, now, if there's a call for dark brown I can always add in a smidgen of molasses or such).
Hey Nate, can you do an episode comparing all the different oils while cooking and baking please? Canola, peanut, vegetable, olive, avocado, coconut, grapeseed, sunflower, safflower, corn and olive. I'm curious in which fries best and if the flavor alters the taste of baking/cooking. Thanks in advance! 😁
I couldn't tell from the video whether this would apply or not, but I know that the Great Value brand doesn't really have a dark brown sugar, but most of the more expensive brands do have both a light and dark brown sugar. If you used dark brown sugar for the brand name, that would make a difference because dark brown sugar has a richer flavor than light.
So I am not suggesting more cookies unless you want to, but I will say that position in the oven with them being on either top or bottom rack does make a difference in the bake of the cookies and noticing how one of the testers had mentioned that several of the cookies tasted greasier than others makes me wonder of those were done on a different rack. Unfortunately without doing this in a lab its damn near impossible to test anything without the slightest inconsistency but I do think this was a very interesting test and agree that some of the results are surprising.
Since A-B testing is notoriously easy to bias (which goes first, etc), firms will often use AAB or ABB testing (duplicating one of the variables) to help cancel out reporting errors / weight your testers appropriately (the tester who recognizes that two of the items are identical should be weighted more and the one who finds differences in identical products should be weighted less). You're using your friends as a measurement tool... but you haven't "calibrated" your measurement yet! You may want to put them through a testing gauntlet to determine their relative tasting strength / accuracy.
The recipe on the back of the Nestle bag is the *original* chocolate chip recipe from Massachusetts: they bought the recipe from the woman who created it, and they've printed it on the packages ever since.
Not surprised the brown sugar made a difference. Thing is that even using the same brand at different freshness levels will have an impact on texture. Molasses is interesting stuff.
Different brands of baking POWDER might make a difference because they can have different compositions of ingredients. I just stick to the same brand for predictability. Different types of salt crystals could also make a difference, but there's more to consider for that than just price.
Just to throw my two cents in, the only difference I have noticed in my cookies (Full disclosure, I make a recipe off a jello pudding pack, so it does have vanilla pudding in it) is when I use eggs from the farm down the street. They just seem better than what I can buy from the store, expensive brand or generic.
Baking soda absolutely matters...it's just not "brand or basic" it's "is it fresh". I've used "high end" baking soda that was in a fancy bag that was a year old and it didn't matter how fancy it was, it didn't work.
What I do is make a double or quad batch and use a chilled metal mixing bowl and whip the batter to the point of being lighter colored and fluffy peaks before putting in chocolate chips. Then I keep it in the fridge between batches so that it stays firm and light. Also make sure to place batter in rough balls and time it so that it's just barely cooked through or a little before that point? This additional amount of air bubbles from the whipping of the mixmaster helps make the cookies lighter tasting and nicely chewy. It's like the difference between ice cream with or without air bubbles (aka creamy versus ice cube ) as long as you don't overcook. Waaaay too easy to snack on. Edit: Also, the recipe I use doesn't use butter but rather Crisco shortening. Not sure if that makes a difference or not with the whipping.
I had always thought that brown sugar made a big difference. But I would like to see a video where you compared time in the fridge before baking ranging from 15 minutes to 2 hours in increments of 30 minutes.
It really doesn’t surprise me as to what made a difference. Brown Sugar, there is a lot of factors that could make one brown sugar batter than another. First there is the size and consistency of the crystals. If they are to large and to hard it will give a grainy feel in your mouth. I personally think the age is a big factor as well, and how it’s stored. Brown sugar has molasses in it, and that gives it a more malty flavour. Most people I know buy yellow sugar and use that instead. Quite a few people think they are the same thing. But one has molasses and the other doesn’t. There is also brown sugar and the much darker old fashion brown sugar. Once again the differences is in the amount of molasses. Vanilla didn’t surprise me either. There are premium vanilla beans and not premium vanilla beans. Which used has a different taste. Then there is the quality of alcohol used. Vanilla is basically vanilla bean paste mixed with some sort of solvent and then it’s left to age for a while. Like with wine, how long, in what way can make a huge difference in the final product. The cheap vanilla is usually artificial vanilla. I think that speaks for itself. Chocolate chips will also make a huge difference. Not all chocolate is equal. That’s why I always use the best chocolate I can find, the same with coco. Everything else won’t make any discernible difference. Great video by the way. It’s a great idea and a question that everyone wonders about when choosing one or the other at the grocery store. Especially now with the prices of everything rising at alarming rates.
I know brown sugar can be made industrially with sulphuric acid (and normal sugar). I've heard the refining steps are difficult/expensive, so I'd assume fancy brown sugar would make sense to be better.
This is actually a great idea for a video but youre prob the only one who is willing to make so many batches lol. Nate you should do a real recipe vs a recipe made from chatGPT.
I figured the chocolate vanilla and flour would make the biggest difference. Vanilla extract and vanilla essence taste vastly different to me. Also cheaper chocolate usually is less finely milled and has different ratios of the expensive vs cheaper ingredients of the chocolate so when eating it I notice that difference. And lastly especially in bread and cake I have noticed the difference of the type of flour used, and with that I mean the same “name” but different brand and prices. Again I think here the milling and sifting and processing of the flour makes a difference. Not sure if this is just willy nilly or if it makes sense.
My girlfriend and I were pleasantly surprised to find that the cheap v name brand stuff didn't make much of a difference, we usually use the cheapest stuff we can get and we feel a lot better about that now lol
The brown sugar surprised me as well, I have to guess that maybe it is the amount of molasses in it that makes the difference. For the butter I would guess that if both were typical American butters, that might not matter because they might be close enough with the butterfat content, but like European butter tends to have more butterfat than American butter, I would expect that to potentially create a difference, then again in chocolate chip cookies that might not be enough to tell, might need something more like a shortbread to tell the difference in the butter. For the flour, kinda the same thing, there might be differences that would be quite noticable given different flours if you have bleached vs unbleached, or different protein content. For the most part it would seem to me and this test shows it, that the chocolate chips would likely make the most difference.
I think you've done as well as can be expected. There is a LOT that can vary in cooking, and trying to get everything sorted is near impossible. Are many factors you're not reasonable able to account for. Say in theory a great cookie needs a certain amount of moisture, and some of that comes from the butter. On a humid day, there's enough moisture in the air that the cheap butter provides enough moisture, but on a dry day the cheap butter isn't enough, and so under that circumstance, the expensive butter makes a difference. That sort of conditional circumstance would take years of testing to sort out, and unless you want to do Brand vs Basic full time, just not possible. And none of that accounts for differences in personal taste.
Has nothing to do with cost. Growing up making cookies with grandma, a finer grain sugar, a bread flour vs cake flour vs all purpose, and dark vs light brown sugar, effect the outcome.
alton brown did a cookie episode and he basically talked about the ingredients that changes the texture of cookies and whatnot. It's not exactly the same but this video reminded me of that episode
To do this correctly you'll need to make 512 batches with every possible combination of each of the 9 ingredients. Or you could shortcut and do 9 batches (each with one ingredient replaced), then choose the best of those and then make 8 more batches (with each of the remaining ingredients replaced), and so on, until you stop finding differences. My guess would be that the butter, vanilla, and chocolate chips would be the big differentiators, that flour and eggs might make a slight difference, and that everything else is completely irrelevant.
Considering brown sugar and chocolate chips are the two most distinguishing ingredients in a chocolate chip cookie as compared to other flavors, I'm not surprised they're on the list. And I'd assume the flour was noticeable because it absorbed more or less liquid and made the results more or less greasy? If so, I'd actually prefer the cheap one, since I like greasy cookies 😅 I am, though, also surprised the butter and eggs didn't seem to matter!
You shouldn't be so surprised about the brown sugar. The cheap ones are made with ultra cheap corn syrup, whereas the high quality brands are made with real sugar cane molasses, and that makes quite a difference in both taste and texture. - some countries uses sugar beets molasses, but it do not taste the same, and do not have the same texture. It's still better than corn syrup, but inferior to sugar cane molasses. But in my own experience, the chocolate in any form of chocolate cake or cookies make the biggest difference. Do not cheap out on the quality of the chocolate, use high end chocolate and then you can skip a bit on the rest of the ingredients, and still get a very tasty product. 😋
I want to see Nate make three more batches: one again with just basic ingredients, one with all brand ingredients, and a final one with only the four most notably different ingredients from this video.
Yes
100%
Absolutely.
yes please
AGREED
I appreciate the fact that you weighted some of the ingredients and tried to explain. I switched to weighing a lot of my ingredients for baking a few years back and have noticed a difference. Especially with my bread making. Weighing really is better than using measuring cups.
I personally find weighing easier and quicker too. No need to faff around trying to level your ingredients in measuring cups and spoons lol. Plus, it's the only way to really get that consistency every time.
Here in Denmark we always use weight contra volume, and of the exact same reason. Using weight make a much better and homogene product.
America is really the only place where people bake without weighing ingredients. It’s honestly a bit of a weird practice, especially if you are trying for consistency. With modern scales, weighing isn’t a hassle at all.
i think to further test this you should make the expensive batch, but replace each ingredient with the cheaper one. see if missing the ingredient makes the cookie worse, rather than seeing if adding it makes it better. maybe good for part three
That is a fun idea!
You are one of the tasters and just want more cookies, aren't you?
@@DH-xw6jp I'm not one of the tasters, but after watching this video, I volunteer as tribute to try 11 batches of cookies 😂
Loving all the content you’re creating. So glad you didn’t disappear after leaving TKOR. The internet is a better place with you in it 😁
This is a great follow up! Isolating each ingredient is definitely the best way to determine what makes the difference for better cookies but I agree with what others have said: 3 more batches should be a final comparison between brand, basic, and selective brand cookies!
I love this series of videos. Very similar to Barry Lewis’ cheap vs steep. I really enjoy the difference in approach from the two, the scientific approach of trying to define the actual better ingredients was interesting.
This is like Guga going after the “perfect” steak. This is gonna be an awesome rabbit hole.
His friends are so supportive, it's wholesome 🥰 they're always down to taste his food experiments
Edit: cholatate chips
I love the red headed friend. I laughed at his body language. He kept yawning and I thought he might lay down and have a nap at anytime. Lol
I mean, if I were invited over to eat an unlimited quantity of cookies, I wouldn't say no either.
If your friend offered free food its hard to say no tbh
Big part of the Vanilla is that the Vanilla plant is actually a bit expensive, so Vanilla Extract is gonna be the expensive option, but the imitation/artificial vanilla is gonna be a lot cheaper. While chemically it's the same, how both are processed, environment they're in can make very subtle changes in the flavor.
While chocolate chips can vary drastically in quality, I think the ingredient people don't expect to make a difference is the brown sugar. I have cooked for enough decades now to know that what is often sold as brown sugar now is not what it was when those recipes were written. Light brown sugar used to be darker and more moist. So, for a better outcome use what is labeled as dark brown sugar. It makes a difference.
I figured, butter, the chips and brown sugar. We have seen a vast improvement in our cookies when we started to make homemade brown sugar. The cookie dough almost has a mousse like consistency, even after sitting in the fridge overnight.
This guy comes up with such good ideas. I hope he does more videos like these.
This was soooo interesting! Would be great to see more of these types of videos! Testing which ingredients matter most
I loved this Nate, the big one for me was butter, I've been thinking about changing buttter in a Christmas cookie recipe that I have made for years. Very interesting no one picked that out! Thank you:)
Even the same "quantity" is going to be controversial or at least complex for certain ingredients. Higher protein flours require more hydration to achieve the correct result, cheap butter has more water and less fat which ought to be accounted for in the recipe somewhere, salt crystal shape impacts volume measurement greatly but often too little to weigh accurately on a home scale.
As a meal prep and coffee enthusiast. I strongly support and encourage weighing your food instead of using a volumetric measurement. Thank you for not bowing to the crowd. Weight doesn’t change volumetric measurements do.
in a regular oven, its generally best to bake your cookies on the top shelf. So having two batches, on two different levels at the same time will yield two different texture results. best to do one batch at a time, at the same height in the oven. unless youre using a very high quality convection oven. the recipe breakdown is super solid! lots of fun! thanks man!
I am surprised by how much I am loving this “series”!
Love you nate, thank you for entertaining us
I figured brown sugar would make a difference. My wife bakes and she has 4 or 5 types of brown sugar in the pantry that all taste different.
Hey Nate you could do a RUclips short showing a cup of flour compacted and then a cup of flour just fluffy and the weights between the two.
showing that measuring a cup of flour by weight is a better form of measurement than by size.
Definitely do more follow up episodes like this one.
I love this more than the brand vs basic videos - super interesting!
Loving how the channel is growing and shaping nate
i can see the work and care that went into this video, appreciate your....scientific work
I love that Nate's channel had just become about baking but I get so curious about this kind of stuff so I'm so glad he's doing these
I like the way you stick pretty close to scientific method. I want to do that sometime, but don’t have the time and patience unless it’s directly related to what I’m doing.
I love watching your BvB episodes. Me wife and I always try and predict what's the most important ingredient before you start your own taste testing. It's fun.
Cookie bonanza! 🥰🥰 Thank so so much for this.❤️
THIS is the kind of content I'm here for!
More of these hardcore comps, Nate.
You got this from Angel, yo. I can tell lol
The salt matters based on grain size; I have separate cooking salt and cookie salt, 'cause coarse-grain cookie salt won't completely dissolve, so it leaves tiny tastable grains in the finished cookies.
Make three batches: basic, brand, and basic with the brand ingredients that were noticable.
Love these videos. Also makes me happy to hear an American using grams as a measurement
I weigh baking ingredients wherever practical, but the world can pry Fahrenheit out of my cold, dead hands!
@@charlie6923 hahah
I was so with you on the butter! Very interesting that it's brown sugar. I would also be curious to see browned butter vs. straight from the package, but that's kind of a different experiment. I learned I'll keep buying the store brand for most stuff, but I'll be upgrading my brown sugar next time!
Great series! I love brand versus basic. That said you are a brave scientist who is also a glutton for punishment. Eleven batches of cookies seems crazy but your pain is our gain. So thank you very much.
I think your biggest accomplishment is getting your friends together in one place. With my friends, that's a herculean task.
Please keep it up doing this sort of content... it's scientific, educational, but also enjoyable at the same time!
Man, you are really going all in on this concept
I'm not surprised about the chocolate chips, vanilla, and brown sugar. Brown sugar has molasses in it, making it more moist (chewier cookie), real vanilla vs. artificial vanilla makes a difference in flavour, and chocolate chips can make or break the recipe (the higher the cocoa, the more rich the flavour, BUT milk chocolate has more sugar in it so it makes the recipe sweeter). I would love to see this test done using lard substituted for butter and using different types of chocolate chips (Nestlé Toll House, Hershey's, Great Value, etc...) and milk chocolate vs. dark chocolate vs. white chips (or flavoured ones just for a challenge).
This is amazingly ambitious!
Better brown sugar has more molasses.. and you know the better chocolate chips have better chocolate.
You nailed it. You never need to make another cookie video.
Alright now do a test with a control batch, a batch with all the control ingredients but with the flour, brown sugar, butter, vanilla and chocolate swapped for the better ingredients, and an expensive batch.
I'm not surprised the chocolate chips made a difference. I used to buy chocolate chips just for snacking and there was a big difference in quality in name brand vs store brand or generic brand. The cheaper brands texture was not as good, not as melty or creamy.
Everytime I hear "better butter" I always think of that old butter commercial, if you know you know lol
Man, I was literally just wanting this style of test earlier this week. So glad to get cookies from Nate. I think there are still a ton of ways to test the cookie (brown sugar brands - Asian, C&H, organic, etc, or melted vs browned vs normal butter). But this style even if difficult would be super interesting in other recipes too.
Or maybe a Vegan vs NonVegan. From the get go we might think the vegan one isn't better, but in the name of science you have to assume both outcomes are possible. I know you try to stick closely to the same recipe, so maybe vegan eggs give you the replacement amount, vegan butter might be tougher. I know chemically they are different but it would be a fun experiment.
Other than doing all brand-name but swapping out one cheap ingredient to see if it degrades the taste for completeness, I think you nailed it
My guess were that brown sugar and butter would make a difference. Vanilla extract I was a bit curious about, but didn't think it would really matter. Flour, eggs, sugar, salt, baking soda and the rest I didn't think would make much of a difference. Well I got one right... ish...
Brown sugar really varies in taste. It can be a deep musty taste or a light "springy" (?) taste or anything between. It wouldn't surprise me if you could find both cheap and expensive versions of both.
Butter can also vary a lot, but I'm not sure how much that carries over in taste after it has been cooked. This time it doesn't seem like it made any noticeable difference. Per haps making a taste test of butter would be interesting. Make sandwiches using a few different brands of butter, fry pieces of bread in the same brands, perhaps bake cookies as a last test and see what differences your friends can taste if any. It would be a very narrow test, not necessarily one that could determine what butter is the best, but it could tell you just how important the brand is for the taste of a dish, and if it's worth the time to experiment with it.
This was a great video
You should always weigh ingredients when baking. You're exactly right.
Yes, that should be a no brainer. Is it not obvious to everyone that mass is the more accurate and repeatable measurement?
This is a great idea. If you want to upscale this you could do this to another recipe. If you could afford then increase the person sample size then if you could determine which parameters will bring significant change in flavor using statistics.
13:00 yeah we call these cookies too. Biscuits are harder and usually smaller :)
Fun video. Now I want cookies. :D
The BRAND of salt will generally not make a difference, but the KIND of salt can. A teaspoon of granulated salt will weigh differently to a teaspoon of kosher salt due to the difference of the salt flake size. Most recipes are tested with kosher salt. The primary difference in something like a choc chip biscuit will be the dairy, the eggs (depending on the eggs themselves) or the chocolate. The darkness of the brown sugar will affect how caramelly it tastes, as dark brown sugar has more molasses in it than a light brown sugar. Vanilla WILL make a difference depending on whether you are using imitation vanilla or a proper vanilla extract/vanilla beans.
Underrated video!
Noticed a difference on the flours... largely because I switched from bleached to unbleached a while ago and found it improved baking noticably, even when buying the store brand unbleached flour. I even prefer generic unbleached to name brand bleached flour.
Not at all surprised by the sugar, either, I've been playing around with different sugars and sugar blends for a while (keep turbinado and caster sugar around standard, now, if there's a call for dark brown I can always add in a smidgen of molasses or such).
Cookiemonster approves this science
Hey Nate, can you do an episode comparing all the different oils while cooking and baking please? Canola, peanut, vegetable, olive, avocado, coconut, grapeseed, sunflower, safflower, corn and olive. I'm curious in which fries best and if the flavor alters the taste of baking/cooking. Thanks in advance! 😁
Lol @Nate, at the end of the video you like like your a) hungover b) had a long gaming session the night before c) just woke up.
Technic makes a difference, butter temperature, mixing speed, temperature when cooking/time in the oven, etc
I couldn't tell from the video whether this would apply or not, but I know that the Great Value brand doesn't really have a dark brown sugar, but most of the more expensive brands do have both a light and dark brown sugar. If you used dark brown sugar for the brand name, that would make a difference because dark brown sugar has a richer flavor than light.
If you take the baking soda, halve it, and then add an equal amount of baking powder, they turn out really good
Also, I loved that the typo on Chocolate Chips was consistent throughout the video 😂
So I am not suggesting more cookies unless you want to, but I will say that position in the oven with them being on either top or bottom rack does make a difference in the bake of the cookies and noticing how one of the testers had mentioned that several of the cookies tasted greasier than others makes me wonder of those were done on a different rack. Unfortunately without doing this in a lab its damn near impossible to test anything without the slightest inconsistency but I do think this was a very interesting test and agree that some of the results are surprising.
How to get invited to every party, ever: bring 11 batches of cookies.
Since A-B testing is notoriously easy to bias (which goes first, etc), firms will often use AAB or ABB testing (duplicating one of the variables) to help cancel out reporting errors / weight your testers appropriately (the tester who recognizes that two of the items are identical should be weighted more and the one who finds differences in identical products should be weighted less). You're using your friends as a measurement tool... but you haven't "calibrated" your measurement yet! You may want to put them through a testing gauntlet to determine their relative tasting strength / accuracy.
I would love to see making him three identical batches of cookies and see whether they guess whats different or not.
The recipe on the back of the Nestle bag is the *original* chocolate chip recipe from Massachusetts: they bought the recipe from the woman who created it, and they've printed it on the packages ever since.
4:52 : A wild Tim the Tatman appeared! (In spirit)
You're insane nate🤣🤣
Not surprised the brown sugar made a difference.
Thing is that even using the same brand at different freshness levels will have an impact on texture. Molasses is interesting stuff.
Great sequel video
You had me at soft chocolate cookies.
Different brands of baking POWDER might make a difference because they can have different compositions of ingredients. I just stick to the same brand for predictability. Different types of salt crystals could also make a difference, but there's more to consider for that than just price.
Just to throw my two cents in, the only difference I have noticed in my cookies (Full disclosure, I make a recipe off a jello pudding pack, so it does have vanilla pudding in it) is when I use eggs from the farm down the street. They just seem better than what I can buy from the store, expensive brand or generic.
Baking soda absolutely matters...it's just not "brand or basic" it's "is it fresh". I've used "high end" baking soda that was in a fancy bag that was a year old and it didn't matter how fancy it was, it didn't work.
Good chocolate and good vanilla
What I do is make a double or quad batch and use a chilled metal mixing bowl and whip the batter to the point of being lighter colored and fluffy peaks before putting in chocolate chips. Then I keep it in the fridge between batches so that it stays firm and light. Also make sure to place batter in rough balls and time it so that it's just barely cooked through or a little before that point?
This additional amount of air bubbles from the whipping of the mixmaster helps make the cookies lighter tasting and nicely chewy. It's like the difference between ice cream with or without air bubbles (aka creamy versus ice cube ) as long as you don't overcook. Waaaay too easy to snack on.
Edit: Also, the recipe I use doesn't use butter but rather Crisco shortening. Not sure if that makes a difference or not with the whipping.
I had always thought that brown sugar made a big difference. But I would like to see a video where you compared time in the fridge before baking ranging from 15 minutes to 2 hours in increments of 30 minutes.
It really doesn’t surprise me as to what made a difference. Brown Sugar, there is a lot of factors that could make one brown sugar batter than another.
First there is the size and consistency of the crystals. If they are to large and to hard it will give a grainy feel in your mouth. I personally think the age is a big factor as well, and how it’s stored.
Brown sugar has molasses in it, and that gives it a more malty flavour. Most people I know buy yellow sugar and use that instead. Quite a few people think they are the same thing. But one has molasses and the other doesn’t.
There is also brown sugar and the much darker old fashion brown sugar. Once again the differences is in the amount of molasses.
Vanilla didn’t surprise me either. There are premium vanilla beans and not premium vanilla beans. Which used has a different taste. Then there is the quality of alcohol used.
Vanilla is basically vanilla bean paste mixed with some sort of solvent and then it’s left to age for a while. Like with wine, how long, in what way can make a huge difference in the final product.
The cheap vanilla is usually artificial vanilla. I think that speaks for itself.
Chocolate chips will also make a huge difference. Not all chocolate is equal. That’s why I always use the best chocolate I can find, the same with coco.
Everything else won’t make any discernible difference.
Great video by the way. It’s a great idea and a question that everyone wonders about when choosing one or the other at the grocery store. Especially now with the prices of everything rising at alarming rates.
I know brown sugar can be made industrially with sulphuric acid (and normal sugar). I've heard the refining steps are difficult/expensive, so I'd assume fancy brown sugar would make sense to be better.
This is actually a great idea for a video but youre prob the only one who is willing to make so many batches lol. Nate you should do a real recipe vs a recipe made from chatGPT.
I figured the chocolate vanilla and flour would make the biggest difference. Vanilla extract and vanilla essence taste vastly different to me. Also cheaper chocolate usually is less finely milled and has different ratios of the expensive vs cheaper ingredients of the chocolate so when eating it I notice that difference. And lastly especially in bread and cake I have noticed the difference of the type of flour used, and with that I mean the same “name” but different brand and prices. Again I think here the milling and sifting and processing of the flour makes a difference. Not sure if this is just willy nilly or if it makes sense.
This video was very entertaining and has that tkor nate energy
A poster outside the window would go a long ways.
My girlfriend and I were pleasantly surprised to find that the cheap v name brand stuff didn't make much of a difference, we usually use the cheapest stuff we can get and we feel a lot better about that now lol
I just want to be there as a guest and eat 😂 i love cookies
The brown sugar surprised me as well, I have to guess that maybe it is the amount of molasses in it that makes the difference. For the butter I would guess that if both were typical American butters, that might not matter because they might be close enough with the butterfat content, but like European butter tends to have more butterfat than American butter, I would expect that to potentially create a difference, then again in chocolate chip cookies that might not be enough to tell, might need something more like a shortbread to tell the difference in the butter. For the flour, kinda the same thing, there might be differences that would be quite noticable given different flours if you have bleached vs unbleached, or different protein content. For the most part it would seem to me and this test shows it, that the chocolate chips would likely make the most difference.
I love this series. No disrespect to TKOR, but I watch more of these vids than theirs nowadays 😂
I think you've done as well as can be expected. There is a LOT that can vary in cooking, and trying to get everything sorted is near impossible. Are many factors you're not reasonable able to account for. Say in theory a great cookie needs a certain amount of moisture, and some of that comes from the butter. On a humid day, there's enough moisture in the air that the cheap butter provides enough moisture, but on a dry day the cheap butter isn't enough, and so under that circumstance, the expensive butter makes a difference.
That sort of conditional circumstance would take years of testing to sort out, and unless you want to do Brand vs Basic full time, just not possible.
And none of that accounts for differences in personal taste.
Has nothing to do with cost. Growing up making cookies with grandma, a finer grain sugar, a bread flour vs cake flour vs all purpose, and dark vs light brown sugar, effect the outcome.
What's funny is we wouldn't say that in England, we call chocolate chip cookies cookies too. Biscuits are basically everything else
I would love to see you do different kinds of fudge??
alton brown did a cookie episode and he basically talked about the ingredients that changes the texture of cookies and whatnot. It's not exactly the same but this video reminded me of that episode
To do this correctly you'll need to make 512 batches with every possible combination of each of the 9 ingredients.
Or you could shortcut and do 9 batches (each with one ingredient replaced), then choose the best of those and then make 8 more batches (with each of the remaining ingredients replaced), and so on, until you stop finding differences.
My guess would be that the butter, vanilla, and chocolate chips would be the big differentiators, that flour and eggs might make a slight difference, and that everything else is completely irrelevant.
Considering brown sugar and chocolate chips are the two most distinguishing ingredients in a chocolate chip cookie as compared to other flavors, I'm not surprised they're on the list. And I'd assume the flour was noticeable because it absorbed more or less liquid and made the results more or less greasy? If so, I'd actually prefer the cheap one, since I like greasy cookies 😅 I am, though, also surprised the butter and eggs didn't seem to matter!
Thank you for doing this so I didn’t have to!
You shouldn't be so surprised about the brown sugar. The cheap ones are made with ultra cheap corn syrup, whereas the high quality brands are made with real sugar cane molasses, and that makes quite a difference in both taste and texture.
- some countries uses sugar beets molasses, but it do not taste the same, and do not have the same texture. It's still better than corn syrup, but inferior to sugar cane molasses.
But in my own experience, the chocolate in any form of chocolate cake or cookies make the biggest difference. Do not cheap out on the quality of the chocolate, use high end chocolate and then you can skip a bit on the rest of the ingredients, and still get a very tasty product. 😋
Definitely nailed tho maybe u should taste some more just to be sure
I would beg to differ on the salt thing especially if iodized. But I also typically add extra salt