Ed, the problems with cookbooks---especially chef-written cookbooks---are legion. Some can be laid at the feet of the publishing house, sure. But far too often there are other reasons, ranging from the fact the chef never made the dish on home-equipment, to the fact that the chef never proofread the recipes, to the fact that changing a recipe from restaurant amounts to home amounts is very often done mathematically, rather than by actually preparing the dish that way.
Even when the chef does make the dish at home, he or she is likely to have a home-kitchen filled with commercial (my son calls it "industrial") type equipment---which adds up to being the same as having made it in the restuarant. Not too many home cooks, after all, have a pair of 9-burner cooktops, and six ovens that never get turned off, and a salamander, and a stove vent that allows indoor grilling, and.....well, you get the point.
All of this adds up to a dish that may be fantastic when you order it in the restaurant, but which doesn't work when you try making it at home.
This is one of the reasons Cheftalk book reviewers are required to prepare at least two recipes from the book, and are encouraged to do more of them. Many a recipe reads well, but doesn't translate into the realities of home kitchens. Most of our reviewers, if a recipe doesn't work, will try another, and still another, in order to reach a fair conclusion as to the quality of the recipes. I've done as many as seven before deciding there was a real problem with that particular book.
On the other side of the equation, despite claims to the contrary, many cookbook publishers do not have test kitchens, and the recipes never are tried. Proofreading has become all but a thing of the past. Many publishers either do not have proofreaders on staff, or farm that task out to freelancers with no familiarity with the subject. Then the chef/author merely signs off on the final proof, without actually reading it (hey, they're busy with their real work, right?), and any mistakes made in typesetting show up in the final book.
To my mind, that last is the biggest problem of all. We got a note, once, from a chef author who was disappointed in our review---which had been rather on the negative side. She said to me, "if you're bothered by all those errors, just think how frustrated I feel...."
But the point is, she had a chance to correct them, and never did. Those errors (and there were many) didn't creep in between the final proofs and the printing. She just hadn't bothered reading those finals before signing off on them.
So, you can blame proofreaders if you want. But to my way of thinking, the author's name is on the product. If she/he doesn't care enough to assure that everything is as right as possible, then that's where any blame lies.  |