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OP
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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?
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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  .
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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 :-/
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addict
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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!
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OP
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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?
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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.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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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."
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Carpal Tunnel
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I don't think that, in cooking, one must actuallyİ 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".
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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?
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Carpal Tunnel
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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.
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