---
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title: "Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking (Ruhlman's Ratios)"
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---

# Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking (Ruhlman's Ratios)

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Review: A book about ratios (This is not a cookbook or a techniques book) - I'm going to start this review by stating what this book is not. This book is not a cookbook, nor is it a techniques book. Some reviewers have found this to be the problem. However, even the author points several times throughout the book that this book is not intended to be a cookbook nor is it intended to be a cooking technique book. If you are looking for either, I suggest you not buying this cookbook. James Peterson writes some great ones on techniques and cooking. Here are three: Cooking , Baking , What's a Cook to Do?: An Illustrated Guide to 484 Essential Tips, Techniques, and Tricks Now that is out of the way, let's discuss what this book is about. Like the title states the book is about ratios. For example, how much water to add to 3 cups of flour to make bread dough. This book will not tell you how to make the best bread in the world. But it will tell you the simple ratio to make a bread. It gives you the tools to experiment in the kitchen. The idea is if you know the ratios to breads, cakes, sauces, meat, etc and comfortable with them it will set you free of the shackles of following a recipe. You make your own recipe and the results are excellent. It does have some recipes on how you can improve on the basic product (called variations) and the recipes are good. But, the whole point is that you have the basic ratio and you build on it. It makes you a better cook. After-all, if all I want is recipes, wI could simply go on the internet and do a quick search. He goes on to state that the techniques you use will in fact have a huge affect on the finished product. The more you practice the better you will get. He doesn't attempt to tell you nor teach you the techniques, but states to practice and have patience. After all, the author, Mark Ruhlman, is not a professional chef. He states he has cooked since the fourth grade. Therefore, he grew up learning it himself. He asked the permission of the Culinary Institute of America to enter the classroom in order to write this book. I think he did a superb job. The book is great tool to have in your kitchen library, so much so that I will say it is a must for anyone that wants to learn how to cook without recipes. It includes basic ratios of many common foods. Including bread dough (such as cookies, breads, pastas, and even pates), batter for cakes and crepes. However, it is not all about baking. It also includes ratios for sauces, stocks, sausages, and custards. In the end I found this book to be extraordinary and to the point There are some pictures to use as a guide that are helpful but not necessary. I read it on my kindle and I found it to be great. I also read it on my computer and android phone using the kindle app. I used these to take my notes. If you are serious about cooking, you will be taking notes. So if you dont like taking notes on the kindle or any of its apps, then I suggest you get the actual book. However, if you dont mind taking notes on the kindle or its apps (like me) then get the kindle version. It does the job.
Review: Exactly what I wanted to read about - cooking science. - Reading about cooking is only second on my list to actually cooking something. I tend toward a scientific approach to my kitchen wherein math and chemistry are as important as technique and skill. My collection of culinary reading is a personal library of 100's of cookbooks and books about cooking. Some are true antiques, some are heirlooms tossed away by relatives who will surely regret the decision, some are ethnic/regional, some are the professional staples, and many aren't even in English. Ruhlman's treatise, I read it in a single sitting front-to-back, is now in a place of easy access for reference next to my hand-me-down copy of Fanny Farmer. What we have here is exactly what the title claims and very little else - it's ratios for cooking. 3 parts flour, 2 parts fat, 1 part water = pie crust; exactly what I wanted to learn. With a reasonably complete commentary on how to bake a pie, what to put in it, the best containers for pies, or even a lot of pie recipes -- mostly a discussion of the ratio (by weight) which makes it very clear, very quickly how pie dough differs from a muffin. He discusses the impact of butter vs lard vs shortening. And I found most of the ratios discussed we similarly treated. I have plenty of texts that discuss in great detail the mechanical aspects (technical skill) that differentiate the muffin method, biscuit method, creaming, etc... I have plenty that offer recipes with ingredient lists. This isn't those. This is the very foundation that all of those should have been based upon, with personal variations, and provides the ratios not only to create a new recipe from knowledge but to debug or tweak an existing recipe based on common ratios. Among my cooking hobbies is recipe writing and bread baking. I bake bread at least weekly, often more. I have often collected a recipe from the internet that just didn't seem write but I could exactly narrow down the problem. With these ratios, it's now easier to quickly check a recipe for reasonable variations before baking it. With these ratios, it's now easier for me to design a recipe based on the science without having to run through numerous batches of trial-and-error. Sure, there's some other material that could be in here to make it even more helpful. But, there are other references out there that provide that information too. I might have even preferred, unlike many of the negative commenters, that Ruhlman had left out much of the commentary and recipes and provided an even shorter tome concentrated more purely on the math and chemistry. Bottom Line: if you need a recipe book then this ain't what you want. There are plenty of those out there and if you tell all of your friends and family that you want some, you'll have a collection of 100's before you know it. Plus, internet. If you need a cooking school manual then this ain't that either. The best of those are a bit costly but there's always, internet. If what you want to do is take recipe analysis down to the bare foundation so you can create a new sort of muffin or cookie without baking twenty batches to get it close - this is near perfection. Photo is my first run of my new pizza muffin recipe. Based on the ratios in this book. Second run will reduce the liquid just a touch but these came out marvelously.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #13,667 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #15 in Cooking, Food & Wine Reference (Books) #125 in Culinary Arts & Techniques (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.7 out of 5 stars 2,245 Reviews |

## Images

![Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking (Ruhlman's Ratios) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71x63fL+-kL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A book about ratios (This is not a cookbook or a techniques book)
*by A***N on December 28, 2010*

I'm going to start this review by stating what this book is not. This book is not a cookbook, nor is it a techniques book. Some reviewers have found this to be the problem. However, even the author points several times throughout the book that this book is not intended to be a cookbook nor is it intended to be a cooking technique book. If you are looking for either, I suggest you not buying this cookbook. James Peterson writes some great ones on techniques and cooking. Here are three: Cooking , Baking , What's a Cook to Do?: An Illustrated Guide to 484 Essential Tips, Techniques, and Tricks Now that is out of the way, let's discuss what this book is about. Like the title states the book is about ratios. For example, how much water to add to 3 cups of flour to make bread dough. This book will not tell you how to make the best bread in the world. But it will tell you the simple ratio to make a bread. It gives you the tools to experiment in the kitchen. The idea is if you know the ratios to breads, cakes, sauces, meat, etc and comfortable with them it will set you free of the shackles of following a recipe. You make your own recipe and the results are excellent. It does have some recipes on how you can improve on the basic product (called variations) and the recipes are good. But, the whole point is that you have the basic ratio and you build on it. It makes you a better cook. After-all, if all I want is recipes, wI could simply go on the internet and do a quick search. He goes on to state that the techniques you use will in fact have a huge affect on the finished product. The more you practice the better you will get. He doesn't attempt to tell you nor teach you the techniques, but states to practice and have patience. After all, the author, Mark Ruhlman, is not a professional chef. He states he has cooked since the fourth grade. Therefore, he grew up learning it himself. He asked the permission of the Culinary Institute of America to enter the classroom in order to write this book. I think he did a superb job. The book is great tool to have in your kitchen library, so much so that I will say it is a must for anyone that wants to learn how to cook without recipes. It includes basic ratios of many common foods. Including bread dough (such as cookies, breads, pastas, and even pates), batter for cakes and crepes. However, it is not all about baking. It also includes ratios for sauces, stocks, sausages, and custards. In the end I found this book to be extraordinary and to the point There are some pictures to use as a guide that are helpful but not necessary. I read it on my kindle and I found it to be great. I also read it on my computer and android phone using the kindle app. I used these to take my notes. If you are serious about cooking, you will be taking notes. So if you dont like taking notes on the kindle or any of its apps, then I suggest you get the actual book. However, if you dont mind taking notes on the kindle or its apps (like me) then get the kindle version. It does the job.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Exactly what I wanted to read about - cooking science.
*by B***R on September 21, 2016*

Reading about cooking is only second on my list to actually cooking something. I tend toward a scientific approach to my kitchen wherein math and chemistry are as important as technique and skill. My collection of culinary reading is a personal library of 100's of cookbooks and books about cooking. Some are true antiques, some are heirlooms tossed away by relatives who will surely regret the decision, some are ethnic/regional, some are the professional staples, and many aren't even in English. Ruhlman's treatise, I read it in a single sitting front-to-back, is now in a place of easy access for reference next to my hand-me-down copy of Fanny Farmer. What we have here is exactly what the title claims and very little else - it's ratios for cooking. 3 parts flour, 2 parts fat, 1 part water = pie crust; exactly what I wanted to learn. With a reasonably complete commentary on how to bake a pie, what to put in it, the best containers for pies, or even a lot of pie recipes -- mostly a discussion of the ratio (by weight) which makes it very clear, very quickly how pie dough differs from a muffin. He discusses the impact of butter vs lard vs shortening. And I found most of the ratios discussed we similarly treated. I have plenty of texts that discuss in great detail the mechanical aspects (technical skill) that differentiate the muffin method, biscuit method, creaming, etc... I have plenty that offer recipes with ingredient lists. This isn't those. This is the very foundation that all of those should have been based upon, with personal variations, and provides the ratios not only to create a new recipe from knowledge but to debug or tweak an existing recipe based on common ratios. Among my cooking hobbies is recipe writing and bread baking. I bake bread at least weekly, often more. I have often collected a recipe from the internet that just didn't seem write but I could exactly narrow down the problem. With these ratios, it's now easier to quickly check a recipe for reasonable variations before baking it. With these ratios, it's now easier for me to design a recipe based on the science without having to run through numerous batches of trial-and-error. Sure, there's some other material that could be in here to make it even more helpful. But, there are other references out there that provide that information too. I might have even preferred, unlike many of the negative commenters, that Ruhlman had left out much of the commentary and recipes and provided an even shorter tome concentrated more purely on the math and chemistry. Bottom Line: if you need a recipe book then this ain't what you want. There are plenty of those out there and if you tell all of your friends and family that you want some, you'll have a collection of 100's before you know it. Plus, internet. If you need a cooking school manual then this ain't that either. The best of those are a bit costly but there's always, internet. If what you want to do is take recipe analysis down to the bare foundation so you can create a new sort of muffin or cookie without baking twenty batches to get it close - this is near perfection. Photo is my first run of my new pizza muffin recipe. Based on the ratios in this book. Second run will reduce the liquid just a touch but these came out marvelously.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Excellent resource
*by R***B on January 15, 2026*

Excellent resource for bakers. Ratios can be applied to any recipe. My engineer husband is the pastry, cookie, cake baker and loves this book. I checked it out of the library so that he could see the value. Once he started reading, he wanted a copy.

## Frequently Bought Together

- Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking (1) (Ruhlman's Ratios)
- Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking

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*Product available on Desertcart Ireland*
*Store origin: IE*
*Last updated: 2026-03-20*