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High Altitude Equivalents

Boiling goes haywire at high altitudes. Foods can boil and boil without being cooked, while the liquid evaporates at an astonishing rate in the rarified air. The boiling point of water, which is 212° at sea level, drops to only 202.5° at an altitude of 5,000 feet, and 195° at 10,000 feet. A rough rule is to add 20% to the cooking time for each thousand feet after the first thousand above sea level. For example, anything requiring 20 minutes boiling when it was cooked at an altitude ranging from sea level to 1000 feet, will require 24 minutes at 2000 feet, 28 minutes at 3000 feet, etc. And the only practical way to boil eggs on a grown-up mountain peak is to lug a pressure cooker along.

Baking many foods is not particularly affected by altitude changes; potatoes, biscuits, and breads, in fact anything without much sugar or shortening, turn out practically the same at 5,000 feet as at sea level. From there on up, the amount of baking powder must be slightly diminished in all sea level recipes. Cakes and pastry are more difficult and begin to act up after 2,500 feet or so, when one begins leaving out a little of both fat and sugar (about 6% to begin with) until whole recipes have to be made over.