Why cookbooks aren't always as reliable as they should be
You’d think the recipes would work. They don’t always …
Having been co-opted to judge one of the Guild of Food Writers awards categories this year I spent the weekend trawling through dozens of the many cookbooks that are published each year - and cooking up recipes from a few of them. And much as I appreciate the work that’s gone into them I have to say there aren’t many that would find a permanent place on my (admittedly overstuffed) bookshelves.
Certainly as a judge I’m looking for a bit more than a collection of recipes - I want context and stories and insights that will make me a better cook. What inspired the recipes? Where did they come from? Is there some technique or combination of ingredients I would never have thought of to which the author has introduced me? Will the book be a new friend in the kitchen?
The most frustrating thing though - as I’ve found in the past - is when recipes don’t work despite the fact you’ve followed the instructions faithfully. Or you simply find they’ve left out a crucial step or ingredient. As a former cookbook author myself I’m not saying I’m blameless in that respect - we all make mistakes - but we expect the publisher to pick us up on them. They don’t always, as you can see from this article I wrote a few years ago …
Cookery books may still be selling like hotcakes but I sometimes wonder why given that so many of the recipes don’t actually work. Unsurprisingly it’s not a subject the publishing industry cares to dwell on but it’s a more widespread problem than you’d think.
We authors do our best but even then howlers can slip through. Although I was lucky enough to learn my trade when Delia was in charge of Sainsbury's Magazine, I've been guilty of a couple myself - a tomato soup where the tomatoes had been left out of the list of ingredients (duh!) and some vegan Thai-style ‘fish cakes’ that contained egg white. None of us picked the errors up.
Tsp printed as tbsp - just one letter’s difference - but a potentially catastrophic effect, particularly in a baking recipe. An extra zero on the number of grams - 250 instead of 25. Disaster!
Chefs are particular culprits because they’re simply not used to thinking in terms of recipes, being vague in the extreme about the quantities and methods involved. I remember working with chef Stephen Markwick on the first draft of a fish soup recipe he’d provided which called for ‘a gallon of fish stock’. Just what every home cook has to hand.
None of this is too bad for the experienced cook who reads through a recipe before starting to make it but it’s far more difficult for those who lack the knowledge to spot an error and the knowhow to deal with it.
And a lot of ‘errors’ are merely questions of taste. The author may be much more tolerant of chilli or salt than you are. You need to learn to adjust recipes to your own palate and the ingredients you have to hand. Also your family's appetites may differ from the author's. I recently cooked a recipe for six that just about fed three not especially greedy people.
The situation isn’t likely to improve as publishers continue to go for TV tie-ins and new authors who’ve never written a book before. Or books that aren’t even written by the author (it has been known . . . ) They also prefer short recipes when long ones might be more helpful and commission books at the last possible minute leaving insufficient time for testing and editing - although my impression is that the US publishing industry is more rigorous than the British one in this respect.
So what about you - have you ever had a disaster with a recipe and what went wrong?
The thing that really gets me is that I am a confident cook - so I am likely to know when it's the recipe and when it's me having a bad day. People who are new to cooking are likely to blame themsleves instead of a dodgy recipe and that's just not fair.
Many years ago I was helping out on a cookbook shoot - which the author hadn't deigned to attend. We were trying to make one of the dishes to photograph and it just didn't work. I called him and he said "Oh, that one never worked for me either". I never saw the completed book so I don't know if they published it anyway.
Goodness, I could write far too much on this subject. And I'm sure I've been involved with the publishing of at least one of those mistakes you list above! I was forever drawn into the world of editorial error and away from diligent design. One of the biggest recipe mistakes in my time in publishing was discovered on one of the books that had the highest standards of editing, proofing etc and sold the most: a ratio for a brine that rendered the resulting pork joint utterly inedible. We had a week of replying to so many irate emails and phone calls! And definitely agree that restaurant chefs find the transition to domestic recipe uniquely difficult. Our very best editor would sometimes put in four or five times as much work as an author in order to make the instructions logical and legible (not to mention lyrical). I can think of many books where the editor should really receive a co-author credit (I can think of just as many where the editor would probably want to put a lot of distance between themselves and the book!). Some of the most difficult moments I spent in publishing were fighting an author's case and, contrarily, fighting for more time/resources for an editor to save an author's work.