I’ve been looking into this some. Where to start…
(Probably best to start by saying that, while I think this is important, it is only for the hardcore among us, since it gets a bit complicated, and by also noting that some issues relating to this are also discussed at another link on the forums:
kfc11.proboards.com/thread/10/egg-milk-powder)My main question has been “how was this done early on in the use of the dry milk and egg” and “when we look at 26g/oz of spice mix into 400g/oz of flour, did the dry milk and egg get added on top of this so that it dilutes the 26g/oz of spices.”
I’m going to say this another way so maybe it is clearer: Ignoring salt, If we take 26g of H&S and add them to 400g of flour, then we get H&S of a certain “strength” (26/426). If we take 26g of H&S and add them to 400g of flour plus 12g of milk and egg powder, then we get H&S of a few percent lower strength (26/438).
In addition to this, I do think that the milk and egg powder are important ingredients, so getting them right is important, both in terms of their total weight in the mix and in terms of their relative weights to each other.
With that being said, if anyone has any thoughts on what I’m going to say below I would be glad to hear them. There is some pretty confusing stuff here and I’m not entirely sure of much of it.
First, let’s start with this link – at about the 2:20 mark:
This establishes what many of us already know - that at some point in the past the milk and egg powder was added in separately in addition to the H&S, and it was not part of the H&S bag. This video doesn’t show the weight of the milk and egg mixture.
Next, let’s go to this link:
shopee.com.my/amp/Kentucky-Fried-Chicken-Seasoning%28740g%29-i.131160246.4836517529There are two immediately curious things about the picture at this link (and I have seen similar pictures elsewhere). I’m just going to throw both of them out there and then I’ll try to reconcile them below.
First, note that the bag says that it has a net weight of 740g (great, 740g equals 26.1027 ounces, like Ken would like to see). But it also says that it weighs 1 pound. Well, that’s obviously not correct since 740 grams is way more than a pound - there are only 453.592 grams in a pound.
If this bag on its own weighs 740g then it weighs 1.63 pounds, not one pound. If this bag, by itself, truly weighs only one pound, then there would need to be about 287g somewhere else in order to bring the total weight up to 740g.
Second, and you have to enlarge the image to see this, but it contains this language, telling you to also use: “one pouch of the correct size (either 225g or 340g) of Milk ‘n Egg Mix.”
Well, this obviously begs the question of “what do you mean by the term ‘correct size’ – how do we know which size is correct?” “When do we use 225g, and when do we use 340g?”
In any event, it seems clear that we would be adding one of these amounts (225g or 340g) on top of the 25 pounds of flour and the contents of the H&S bag. (I’m not going to delve into whether 25 pounds of flour is correct because you can find pictures from various countries showing the weight of the flour bag as being either 25 pounds on its face (in the U.S. and U.K., for example) or 11.34 kilos, which is exactly 25 pounds (out to 3 decimal places), in countries that use the metric system).
I’m also not going to go through a blow by blow of all the math, but here is some pure speculation, which could be entirely wrong.
As seen above, at the particular point in time when these pictures were taken, there were two possible sizes of the Milk ‘n Egg Mix pouch (which I’ll call “MEM” below so I don’t have to keep typing that out). Those sizes were 340g and 225g, and we know that 340-225 = 115g.
So the difference in weight of the two possible MEM bags was 115g, and in a given scenario you would be using 115g more (or less) of MEM than in another given scenario.
Well, 115g is exactly 4 ounces (4.056 ounces). Therefore, it seems possible to me that the smaller amount of MEM (225g) was for use with a 30 ounce seasoning bag, and the larger amount of MEM Mix (340g) was for use with a 26 ounce seasoning bag.
In this case, the amount of “things other than flour” that were added to the flour would be equivalent in weight in both scenarios at 38 ounces (either a 30 ounce seasoning bag plus 8 ounces of MEM, or a 26 ounce seasoning bag plus 12 ounces of MEM).
But I’m not sure about this (and I’m going to give a contrary possibility below). In any event, the fact that the difference in weight between the MEM pouches is exactly 4 ounces, and that’s obviously also the difference in weight between 26 and 30g of seasoning, is interesting.
Now, let’s turn back to this question: What to make of the notation that the bag linked above says it weighs 740g, but also says it weighs one pound? It is hard to believe that this is a typo, since this is basic math.
It is possible that the gram weight stated on this bag is the combined weight of both this bag and the MEM amount – that they are considered as one unit for labeling purposes. Let’s say that this bag itself – the one shown in the picture – weighs one pound, which is 16 ounces, which is 453g. We then need an additional 287g to get up to a 740g combined weight. That’s pretty close to the average weight of the 2 MEM bags, which is 283g. So perhaps the weights of the H&S and MEM bag are being combined and shown as weighing 740g total with perhaps the weight of the actual H&S bag that is show weighing one pound.
(Just to note, in my view this really has no bearing on Ken’s research relating to the original weight of the H&S bag being 26 ounces because once KFC started using extracts and/or concentrates then the various H&S weights no longer necessarily correlated, and because we are using real H&W, and not concentrates or extracts, I agree that for our purposes we should be looking at what KFC did originally when they were solely using real H&S as well. My focus here is solely on determining how much milk and egg powder KFC uses.)
If any of this is correct, then it would lead to some nice, round numbers in the Imperial system – based on one scenario, we would have 400 ounces of flour, 26 ounces of spice mix, and 12 ounces of milk and egg powder:
Pounds Ounces Grams Percent
Flour 25.0 400 11339.80 91.33%
OR Spice Mix 1.625 26 737.09 5.94%
Egg and Milk Powder 0.7495723 11.99315685 340 2.74%
12416.89 100.00%
So, to state the obvious, we would be adding a total of 12 ounces/grams of MEM on top of our 400 oz/grams of flour. This is the most “dilute” that I can see being applicable to the H&S – it assumes that a full 12 ounces of MEM is added on top of the flour. Of course, to the extent that you simply removed 12 ounces/grams of flour and instead replaced that "missing" flour with 12 ounces of MEM, then you wouldn’t further dilute the H&S at all.
With respect to the relative weights of the milk powder vs the egg powder in the MEM (and, as Ken and others have stated, there is evidence that this should be skim milk powder (not whole milk powder) and egg white powder (not whole egg powder), and there is also evidence that whey powder should be used as part of the milk powder), based on the weight of skim milk and an egg (using a whole egg for this, despite what I just said), the percentage breakdown would be as follows:
Grams Percent
Milk weighs 226.8 82.82%
Egg weighs 47.06 17.18%
Total 273.86 100.00%
One might want to just use 80/20 as a starting point for simplicity’s sake.
