It sounds like she has been claiming that the recipe that is literally printed on the side of the box has actually been "her" recipe for all these years.

Wait until you see the family recipes for limoncello.

I cut the sugar in grandma's limoncello by 30% and still end up with rocket fuel syrup which my friends think will cause sleep problems and diabeetus

The yeast eats the sugar and turns it into alcohol. More sugar more alcohol, grandma’s version sounds good.

Alcohol concentrations over 20% kill yeast, so adding sugar to distilled spirits will not create more alcohol.

Ahh, yes I forgot it’s not fermented you just use vodka or something stronger with the lemon peels.

That's one where I'm ok with people not having to do all the steps: I can't even imagine a grandpa try to distill alcohol in their basement or something.

Traditionally Limoncello is not done via distillation process. But infusion. Like many of the other Italian alcoholic beverages (various versions of amari, nocino, etc).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limoncello

On the other hand I wish there was a legal avenue for home distilling like there is for homebrewing. Beer doesn't interest me much but the ridiculous balance of a reflux still is fascinating to me.

In many parts of the world, that's absolutely a thing grandpas do :)

Totally. An Austrian fellow (who was indeed a grandfather) we rented a cottage from did this and told us about when I asked about what he was going to do with the hundreds of apples falling from his ancient apple tree. Apparently it's legal there to distil your own eau de vie at a non-commercial scale. We went home with a complementary empty plastic water bottle filled with his Schnaps.

It used to be a thing in the Netherlands too, but the lack of legality made that a much less popular hobby.

I visited an orchard this weekend and came home with a bottle of plum brandy. Seems like every family of central european descent has a recipe.

Honestly I don't mind if people don't make everything themselves as there's always going to be a line where you go "well I'm not doing that" (you're probably not milling your own flour, growing your own wheat, milking your own cows, raising your own chickens etc...).

I just think they've tried to reach a bit far for a human interest angle - it's already annoying that customers are getting shafted, that's important! We don't need to spin a yarn about little Granny Scroggins cakes disappearing from the local church fair.

But they did disappear. Your disdain for unskilled cooking doesn’t offset the fact that it still became a family tradition.

The entire point of the article is that these aren’t just corporate trash products. They stick around long enough and they get woven into the culture.

Imagine if the recipe for spam changed and destroyed a bunch of Hawaiian dishes. I suspect you wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the importance it has in their communities.

If they started selling Spam in smaller cans and there was an article complaining that it has destroyed a dish my response would be roughly the same: the company are shitty for doing shrinkflation, and the recipe isn't destroyed the person needs to adjust the quantities.

Let's not make this into something it isn't, please.