It depends on the context.

If I'm celebrating a holiday or cultural event, it is good to skew closer to tradition as the food is part of the tradition.

Outside of that, tradition was just optimizing to the cooking techniques of the time. I like Adam Ragusea's analysis when discussing spaghetti and meatballs. The context of the recipe 60 years ago was that it was a high scale recipe for a large extended family, a context they doesn't fit most uses today.