Good morning. Today marks the 48th edition of the Sunday Reset—and the 47th consecutive one in which I’ve written. (That’s almost a year!) To celebrate this medium-sized, albeit random, achievement, I’d like to highlight a few things this newsletter has learned over the last 48 weeks.
1: Names make recipes better.
Something we noticed early on: Whether it’s a celebrated chef or relatively unknown community member, if there’s a name attached to a recipe (e.g. Judy Hesser’s Oven-Fried Chicken) you, our readers, are significantly more likely to click on it. The psychology behind this seems obvious: Our brains (likely) associate a name in a recipe’s title with some level of credibility. Recognizing this phenomenon has helped us two-fold: For one, it incentivizes me to include more recipes with names, which, thankfully, tend to be really good recipes—like Jamie Oliver’s Crispy Chicken Legs With Tomatoes & Basil and Vito’s Shrimp Scampi. Second, it encourages me to include a recipe developer (or community member’s) name whenever mentioning their work in email—like we did earlier this month with Heather’s Honey Mustard Chicken Wings.
2: The Don’t Miss This section is missed, often.
Which is unfortunate. Mainly because the content included there—like the debut episode of It’s Fine—is hand-selected by me and therefore, at the very least, absolutely worth watching. We’ve explored a few ideas on how we can make this section more appealing, (I suggested renaming it to “Please, Don’t Miss This”) but haven’t quite found a winner. I’m sure we’ll figure it out soon, but in the meantime, here are some directions on how to best find this unmissable section: Scroll down.
3: Pasta salad dot com.
A media company that solely covered cold noodles dressed in sauce would crush. Seriously: Pasta salad recipes—like this orzo salad with scallions, hazelnuts, & golden raisins—are this newsletter’s strongest performers. And when you throw a name on the front—like with Sarah Jampel’s Cold Vegetable & Noodle Salad with Ponzu Dressing—it’s game over.
4: We want more feedback.
If you like (or hate) a newsletter, let me know. If you’ve got any questions about recipes, food, or why this email’s so reliant on em dashes to make its fundamentally unserious arguments, let me know. My email is paul.hagopian@food52.com—I’d love to hear from you.
