We were interested to find out what inspired Lucy to start the 'recipe ruiners' video segment on her account in the first place.

"I kept seeing them around the place and just thought they were so funny and figured there must be other people who also found them as funny as I did," she told Bored Panda that her primary motivation was to make others laugh.

In the content creator's opinion, it doesn't matter all that much how specific or well-written a recipe is, "people either don’t read it correctly or change things then blame the author." 

She shared that she has seen people who "burn things then get into an argument with their boyfriend and blame the author… no amount of good recipe writing can save you from that!" Alas, even the very best recipes writers will have to deal with bizarre comments underneath their posts. It's a question of 'when,' not 'if.'

"As a creator, I mostly focus on sharing parts of my life that I think will help people and sometimes just make them laugh!" Lucy told us.

"I’ve had an unusual journey in life that means I am able to help other people starting down the infertility path themselves to navigate the system and handle its unique challenges and just know they aren’t alone. I think TikTok makes people feel less alone in a way other platforms just haven’t captured."

The beauty of Lucy’s ‘recipe ruiners’ series is that it gives a whole different perspective to the sometimes mind-boggling world of food. If you thought that only decent, polite, and rational people cook at home, well, you were wrong.

We sometimes see maniacs who use mayonnaise instead of heavy cream… and then boast about it online. Then there are those who substitute flour with salt and think it’s the recipe’s fault when they don’t get the expected results. That’s the kind of eldritch knowledge that can break your mind, H. P. Lovecraft-style. Whether you’re religious or not, you might be likely to agree that those people need Jesus in their lives, just as a broad precaution against culinary sins.

Generally speaking, baking is a science while cooking is a form of art. That’s not to say that bakers can’t be creative or that precision and discipline aren’t valued in cooking.

Far from it. It’s just that it’s far more essential to follow the instructions to the letter when you’re baking a pie or a cluster of cupcakes. Meanwhile, if you’re frying something up, you can allow yourself a bit more freedom to ‘jazz’ things up.

In other words, cooking allows for more freedom than baking when it comes to substituting some ingredients for others.

For instance, you may have run out of a specific spice, or fruit, or vegetable that the recipe calls for. No worries, you can still avoid the hassle of running to the shop by using what you have at hand in the pantry as a crutch.

However, this simply does not work if you substitute things based on just how they look (e.g. mayonnaise and cream), instead of their flavor profiles.

Yes, aesthetics are important, but we don’t just eat with our eyes. Your baked goods and dishes have to taste well, not just look more or less like the pics in the recipe.

At the same time, we shouldn’t be blind to the fact that culinary fashions come and go. The aesthetics can change wildly, but they tend to rely on flavor profiles that people have enjoyed for very long stretches of time. That’s why it’s so important to get the flavor combos right.

A while back, Professor Nathalie Cooke, from McGill University, illuminated Bored Panda about vintage party food recipes from the 1950s. She noted that, as strange as the dishes might look, the “basic flavor combination is something that reaches across the decades.”

“[The vintage recipes] may seem very odd to us in the 21st century, but the taste combinations—savory and sweet (tuna waffles, ham and bananas) or sweet and sour (mayo with lime) are surely very familiar,” she said during an earlier interview.

“There were ‘fads’ at mid-century: think of cookbooklets demonstrating how to decorate one’s ham with slices of canned pineapple, topped with the bedazzling red of a maraschino cherry, for example! And you don’t mention the jaw-dropping recipes incorporating marshmallows in main course dishes, recipes that were brain children of corporate marketing departments,” Professor Cooke told us.

“But if we were to create one of today’s favorites from scratch, say Pad Thai, we would start from the same basic taste combinations you describe in what at first glance seem like bizarre plate partners,” she noted.

“Cooking bitter tamarind with water, raw sugar and fish sauce will build the basic foundation (sour, salty, and sweet). To that one would add the requisite green onions, bean sprouts, and noodles—and likely some additional flavor notes such as shallot, garlic, and perhaps dried turnip (salty and sweet) to deepen the flavor,” the professor said.

Which of these internet recipe comments are going to haunt you in your nightmares, dear Pandas? Did any of them shake you to your culinary core, as they did us? What's the very worst recipe comment you've ever read online? And what do you personally value the most when it comes to online cooking and baking instructions? Share your thoughts and opinions in the comments. We can't wait to see what you have to say!