<p>The new recipe requires fewer exotic ingredients "and takes less time than it, but produces just as tasty a soulfle as the old recipe".</p>
<p>(a)same as above
(b)and takes less time than the old recipe, but produces just as tasty a souffle.</p>
<p>I don't understand why B is correct when the it lacks proper comparison structure. For answer choice B, instead of this, "..produces just as tasty a soulffle", shouldn't it be "produces just as tasty as a soulffle"?</p>
<p>It wouldn’t make sense to say “produces just as tasty as a souffle”, because they are BOTH souffles. The original sentence is wrong just because it uses “it” and “old recipe” to describe the same thing, but I don’t know the technical term for it.</p>
<p>Ambiguous pronoun reference makes A the incorrect answer. You do not know what “it” is exactly referring to.</p>
<p>Thank you for your reply.
I don’t mean to question what you just said, but why is it correct to use “as” without another “as” following it.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s just me, but it sounds so awkward to say “just as tasty a soulffle”.</p>
<p>Because we don’t know what “it” is referring to; you can’t just assume that it’s the souffle.</p>
<p>The second “as” is implied since the comparison has already been made in the beginning of the sentence (“than the old recipe”). “but produces just as tasty a souffle [as the old recipe]” or “but produces a souffle that is just as tasty [as the old recipe]” would make the construction (“as … as”) complete, but omitting the part in brackets (“as the old recipe”) doesn’t compromise the meaning of the sentence since the comparison is implied from context.</p>
<p>The original sentence is wrong because the sentence is comparing the new recipe to the old recipe. We can’t possibly know that “it” is “the old recipe” if “the old recipe” isn’t stated in the sentence at all.</p>
<p>Using “just as tasty as a souffle” does not make sense. The sentence means that BOTH the new and old recipes produce souffles, and the new recipe produces just as tasty a souffle [as the old recipe does]. </p>
<p>However, if we were to add the bracketed part in, the sentence would sound like: “The new recipe requires fewer exotic ingredients and takes less time than the old recipe, but produces just as tasty a souffle as the old recipe does.” In this case, “the old recipe” is repeated twice and makes the sentence too wordy, so we can just remove the second part [as the old recipe does], because the first part of the sentence has already implied that the comparison is between the old and new recipes.</p>
<p>If we were to use “just as tasty as a souffle”, we would be comparing something that the new recipe produces vs a souffle, and the sentence would only make sense if we change it to “The new recipe requires fewer exotic ingredients and produces something just as tasty as a souffle.” The “as…as” structure is only used to compare two different things, and what we are comparing here is the old and new recipes, not what the new recipe produces and the souffles that the old recipe produces.</p>
<p>I think crazybandit explained it better than me, but I just wanted to add my two cents worth :)</p>
<p>Thank you all for spending time to explain this thoroughly. I am still perplexed by “tasty a souffle”. Shouldn’t it be “a tasty soulffle”?</p>
<p>“The new recipe produces just as tasty a souffle as the old recipe produces” basically means “The new recipe produces a souffle JUST AS TASTY AS THE SOUFFLE THAT THE OLD RECIPE PRODUCES.” I assume that you are simply not familiar with this structure, so instead of trying to break it down, I will simply show you examples of the structure and tell you what each example means in simpler words:
CORRECT: I drink just as much water as he drinks.
(MEANING: We [generally] drink the same amount of water.)</p>
<p>CORRECT: I am just as tall as he is.
ALSO CORRECT: I have a stature just as great as the stature that he has.
ALSO CORRECT: I have a stature that is just as great as his stature.
ALSO CORRECT: My stature is just as great as his stature.
ALSO CORRECT: I have just as great a stature as he has.
(MEANING: He and I have the same height.)</p>
<p>CORRECT: I produce as much sweat as a man in a sauna.
ALSO CORRECT: I produce sweat as much as a man in a sauna does.
ALSO CORRECT: I produce sweat as much as a man in a sauna produces.
INCORRECT: I produce sweat as much as a man in a sauna produces sweat.
CORRECT: A man in a sauna produces as much sweat as I do.
(MEANING: I sweat a lot. In fact, a man in a sauna and I sweat at the same rate and intensity.)</p>
<p>CORRECT: I run as much as an athlete runs.
CORRECT: I run as much as an athlete does.
CORRECT: My running is as frequent as an athlete’s running.
(MEANING: An athlete and I [generally] run the same amount.)</p>
<p>You are probably still confused.</p>
<p>Thanks guys. I understand everything except for this part “tasty a souffle”. Shouldn’t the adjective, “tasty”, be placed right next to the verb so it goes like this “tasty souffle”. </p>
<p>So the new sentence would sound like… </p>
<p>The new recipe requires fewer exotic ingredients and takes less time than the old recipe, but produces just as tasty souffle. </p>
<p>I have never seen a sentence or phrase that has an article, like “a”, in between the ADJ and the Noun.</p>
<p>Look at another example:</p>
<p>“The new professor in the school is nicer than the old professor, but is as bad a teacher.”</p>
<p>Would it make sense to say:</p>
<p>“The new professor in the school is nicer than the old professor, but is as bad teacher.”?</p>
<p>crazybandit made me LOL.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’ll have a try at explaining this, too.</p>
<p>This is a feature of English usage that isn’t very clear to a lot of people. I think the problem may come partly from the fact that you’re thinking of the phrase as “tasty a souffle,” rather than “as tasty a souffle.” The original sentence correctly says “[the new recipe] produces just as tasty a soulfle as the old recipe.” Would it make sense to you, Veyron, if the wording were “…produces a souffle just as tasty as the old recipe”? The order of the words has changed, but the first wording–the one that you find confusing–means exactly the same thing as the second: “a souffle [that is] just as tasty…”</p>
<p>You can’t (at least, most people can’t) get all the way through this by trying to work out the grammar. At some point, you’re just going to have to learn, remember, and accept the fact that “just as tasty a souffle” means “a souffle just as tasty”; “just as bad a professor” means “a professor just as bad”; “just as confusing an explanation” means “an explanation just as confusing.”</p>
<p>Admirable explanations there, crazybandit and Sikorsky. :)</p>
<p>@Businessgrl</p>
<p>You would say the former.</p>
<p>Yes, that’s my point :)</p>
<p>The “it” is ambiguous; you need to mention the old recipe to have the reader understand what you’re referring to.</p>
<p>Try this:</p>
<p>The new recipe requires fewer exotic ingredients “and takes less time than it, but produces just as tasty <a href=“of”>b</a>** a souffle as the old recipe.”</p>
<p>Any better?</p>