We often use the above expression to mean that we made something from basic ingredients. Just how basic does one get when using the term in cooking, furniture building, tailoring, etc? I recently was involved in a discussion of the term as it relates to my hobby of building model airplanes. One camp holds that one must design the model, then fabricate the parts, then assemble and finish it to declare it "from scratch," whereas another camp feels that one need only build from another's plans. What say you? Is a food dish prepared form an established recipe "from scratch?" Are clothes made from a store-bought pattern "from scratch?

My spontaneous guess is that "from scratch" means starting with a raw sketch like that made with the tip of the shoe in the sand... I would never apply the expression to cooking, though. "Scratch" sounds wrong there, somehow, except when you scratch (or scrape) the plate at the end of the meal.

I like youe explanation, siebster. I'm not too sure 'bout 'from scratch' itself. But if you 'scratch' while playing a game, it means you got nothing, right? To play a 'scratch match' in sport is also quite common. Not clearing up your question here am I :-/

Gentleman,

In cooking, I can make a cake by pulling a mix out of the cupboard and adding eggs, oil, and water, or I can make it from scratch, by pulling out my recipe, the flour, the cocoa, the baking soda, some milk, eggs, and oil. The difference is not only the time and the mess, but oh, that cake from scratch tastes sooooo good! [licking my lips-e] And as much as I'm drooling, I better not get into the difference between a can of frosting from the store, and the stuff I make from scratch with real butter and melted chocolate!

I would never apply the expression to cooking, though.

Yet the expression is common here in the USA.

Angel, I do understand the level of satisfaction of which you speak, and I think that it's a factor in doing any activity "from scratch." Nevertheless, I still want to know just how basic one must get to call it that.

I now know that the expression seems odd in Switzerland thanks to WSIEBER, but how about in the rest of the world? Is it idiomatic to the USA in this sense?

Is it idiomatic to the USA in this sense?

We use it in Canada. You can bake a cake from scratch and the result is scratch cake, both different parts of speech taken to mean the same thing.

From www.word-detective.com

In any case, if you check under the entry for "scratchcake" in the Second Edition, you'll find
an explanation of "from scratch." It means, of course, from the absolute beginning, without any
advantage, in this case without benefit of a prepared soup mix. The phrase comes from the
lingo of 19th century sporting events, specifically the "scratch" drawn in the ground which
served (and often still does) as the starting line of a foot race. A runner "starting from scratch"
received no handicap or benefit -- whatever the contestant accomplished was due solely to
his or her own efforts. So, too, is a cook baking a cake without the benefit of Betty Crocker
or her ilk said to be making it "from scratch."

I don't think that, in cooking, one must actually© grow the wheat that the flour was ground from; plain old store bought ingredients are good enuff. The recipe need not be one's own; an old family recipe will do or even one taken from The Joy of Ludicranian Cooking will serve. The important point is that the various elements of the recipe be in their most basic form (baking powder is allowed even though it is a pre-mixed combination of baking soda and an acidic ingredient, typically cream of tartar). In a cake mix these dry ingredients will be all pre-mixed. Other ingredients are added by hand. For other dishes there will be some degree of pre-mixed ingredients. Often the lovely AnnaS and I will do something of a hybrid cooking involving using a mix of one sort or another but adding ingredients beyond those recommended by the suggestions on the box. In the case of a dish involving something like, e.g., pinto beans using canned beans is considerably easier than using dry beans that require long periods of soaking and precooking without necessarily adding much to the quality of the final product (other than assuring a low sodium content) but would, I think, prevent one from saying that the process was "from scratch".

Ah, you're quite the busy-bee in the kitchen, arn't you Faldage?
The 'from scratch' business had to be from sport, eh. Anyone like to clear up the 'scratch match' mystery for us too?

One form of "scratch-match" involves a scheme in which cards have numbers printed on them which are then hidden by an opaque coating that hides the numbers until scratched away. You buy the card for a small price, gambling that you will find a lucky number, and win a prize. Naturally the promoters sell so many such cards that they collect far more than they pay out.

when i was a kid, there was a "Fortune Game". it was a small piece of cardboard, with a 10 by 10 array of dots you could by a Dot for a dime. Each dot told a forutune (chinese cookie type) and each, could be a winner! You couldn't chose which dot you got, but rather, they were always punched out in order (1 to 100)
you could win $1, or $5. Each Dot got punched out with a small tool, similar to a awl.

as a child, i figured out, each row equalled $1-- and with 10 rows, the shop keeper could take in $10, and with 2 winners (one each, $1, $5) still have a $4 profit!

it also occured to me, no one would buy any of the dots once they knew there was already a $5 winner, so the winning dot was always one of the last. i was impressed as a child that people would by these dots! i bought one, once, the dot # was in the 90's, i didn't win, and never bothered trying again.

i suspect they were illegal, but they were very common in poor neighborhoods. I haven't seen one in years-i don't know what about this thread triggered the memory!

"starting from scratch" is indeed derived from early sports , amongst other things it applies to early prizefighting, where two lines would be drawn (roughly 18 inches apart) from which each boxer would begin. when a fighter got knocked down, he would have 30 seconds to stand up and put his foot back on the line for action to recommence hence "toe the line"

the Duncster

In Ontario, so-called Scratch and Win tickets are popular. Being a skeptic (not half-bad at math), I've always called them Scratch and Lose tickets.

Chances of winning if you play
     1:10,000,000

Chances of winning if you don't play
     0:10,000,000

Chances that a couple of bucks a week is going to break you
     1:10,000,000,000

>I now know that the expression seems odd in Switzerland thanks to WSIEBER, but how about in the rest of the world? Is it idiomatic to the USA in this sense?

It is common enough here in the UK in the same situations that have already been discueed.

I have always planned to go to a "Messiah from Scratch" where people just turn up, are provided with words and music and sing Handel's Messiah with no previous rehearsal, (ear plugs not always necessary).

"Messiah from Scratch" where people just turn up, are provided with words and music and sing Handel's Messiah with no previous rehearsal,

I'm told by people that have done that, jmh, that it is a glorious experience for those taking part - but all have siad that they didn't think it would be so goo d for anyone listening!

I'm all for doing things from scratch, although there are definite disadvantages as well. The only reason that my best-selling book has not yet been published is that it took me ages to make the paper, and grinding the pigments for the ink has also been time consuming. And I haven't even caught the goose, yet, in order to make the pens.

I haven't even caught the goose

Well! Harrumph!© I should have thought that you would have stolen an egg from a goose's nest and raised one your self.

Oh, mercy, I've done the Messiah sing-along with only two misses since 1981 (the first time, it was just two weeks after my C-section, and the second one fell on the night of the dress rehearsal for a "real" performance of The Messiah, in a short-lived community choir I was in). But I would never say that a performance is from scratch; only a recipe.

Rhuby, I shall be quite happy to come and catch that goose for you, my Dear, even if I have to chase it all the way to Barrow!

Being a skeptic (not half-bad at math), I've always called them Scratch and Lose tickets.

When I was a student my Economics lecturer referred to the Lottery as a 'stupidity tax' and the more you play the more stupid you are.

I only play when the jackpot gets really big now. Not so stupid, huh?

I only play when the jackpot gets really big now

The bigger the jackpot the greater the number of people that play; the greater the number of people that play the greater the number of people that win; the greater the number of people that win the greater the number of people that divide up the winnings.

The bigger the jackpot the greater the number of people that play; Agree for non-regular players

the greater the number of people that play the greater the number of people that win; Not the jackpot but the smaller prizes, yes.

the greater the number of people that win the greater the number of people that divide up the winnings. That use to be the case here but it's all changed. We pick six from 42. I'll let you work out the odds but it's mind-bogglingly difficult for an individual to pick the winning number sform a single ticket. Most of the winners these days are multi-playing syndicates of twenty or more.

I know the US has different rules, combinations and ridiculous jackpots for their lotteries but that doesn't work over here. People play more (that is, buy more tickets than usual) when the jackpots are 'small' like €1m - €2m. The largest jackpot has only been £5.5 and that was a rare occurrence!!

US jackpots have gotten so big, it becomes mathamatically possible to buy a ticket with every possible combination of numbers, (so you are sure you will win, not just the big prize, but a whole bunch of small ones ( 1 set of 6 winning numbers, 6 sets of 5 winning numbers, some impossible big number of 4 winning numbers.) Even if 1 (one) other person also picks the big one, you will still win enough to cover the cost of buying all the tickets!

however, its almost impossible to do, because only authorized dealers sell the tickets, and you'd have to be able to hack into their machines, to run an app to generate the complete set of numbers.. and the states main frames not be able to handle the load. cranking the number out one by one would be way to slow..

Helen:

But it has been done. Some years ago a bunch of people in Australia got together and hatched a shceme to buy every number combination in the Virginia lottery after it had swollen to a payout of several times the number of dollars it took to "buy the wheel". That's a term that bears looking at here, so this is really a word post!

Anyway, they went to the headquarters of a retailer in Virginia which had access to lots and lots of the machines, and they began spewing out the tickets. Due to time restraints they were unable to purchase all of the tickets, but they did hit the big winner and as you said an impossible number of other winners.

BUT! The Virginia Lottery Commission said that they would not pay off on the tickets because their rules specifically required the money to be forked over in cash at the site that actually sold the ticket. And of course the Australian combine had paid by cashier's check at the headquarters of the retailer.


So what happened? In a time-honored tradition, the combine sued and eventually won. The Lottery Commission had to pay out an annuity, but lawyers' fees ate up so much they members of the combine got only a little bit more than if they had put out their money at interes, certainly a safer way to accumulate wealth.

The kicker is, though, that if there had been five or six tickets sold with all six numbers, the combine would have lost money. Buying the wheel IS a risk.


TEd (who followed this with great interest because of the audacity shown on both sides)

I have doubled money on playing the lottery. That is to say, for every dollar I have spent, I have won two dollars! So there!


I spent a buck one time...it brought me two! I quit while I was ahead! Tee hee!

have doubled money on playing the lottery. That is to say, for every dollar I have spent, I have won two dollars! So there!

I prefer http://www.freelotto.com In two years, I have won a total of $320.00 US for an outlay of $0.00 US

I have always planned to go to a "Messiah from Scratch" where people just turn up, are provided with words and music and sing Handel's Messiah with no previous rehearsal, (ear plugs not always necessary).

My High School chorus had a tradition of doing the Halleluiah Chorus every year at the Christmas Concert. Any past members of the chorus present (and there always were many) were invited on stage and the audience was asked to sing along (music provided). Remains one of the most powerful musical experiences of my life, you should really do it, Jo.

Rhuby said : I only play when the jackpot gets really big now. Not so stupid, huh?

Got to admit that I usually by a single ($1) ticket when the jackpot has not been hit for many months.
However, I have no problem with spending the odd dollar on a ticket when the payout is "just" a million or two. A dollar isn't much to pay for a week of dreams.
Generally, people who play often have a set of numbers they play all the time. Birthdates, chidrens'ages, etc.
To get a larger share of a big jackpot simply buy several dollars worth of the same number! For example : ten numbers match the winning number. You have five of them. So you get half and the others split the other half.

Oh! And in golf a "scratch player" is one who is allowed no strokes but must play the game with no advantage.

To get a larger share of a big jackpot simply buy several dollars worth of the same number!

To get all of a big jackpot get one ticket with some combination of numbers that is perceived to be especially unlikely to win, e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. The odds are exactly the same as the odds of, say, 12, 25, 31, 35, 42, 48 but no one else is likely to pick such a combination because it is perceived as being particularly unlikely.