Have to vent about people who think they can write recipes (but can't)

So, how do you deal with such a situation?

Shel

That was a poorly written recipe before it was scaled down. Garlic cloves, tomatoes, leeks, etc, do not come in uniform sizes, so the flavor will never be consistent. Scale it down and it becomes downright bizaare.

What? Sounds right to me. ;)

In all due respect to the job you do, Suzanne, I have to say I'm not the least bit surprised.

Try going through 25 years worth of cooking magazines all at once, as I recently did; and try following cookbook directions more carefully for editorial review reasons, and several things become all too apparent:

1. When it comes to recipes, the copyright laws may as well not exist. Recipes are picked up, with no attribution, at an alarming rate. And if there are errors in the original, they get repeated, for one or more of the reasons below.
I'm not talking about making minor changes and calling it a new recipe. I'm talking about the exact same recipes, picked up and presented as new by a different magazine or in another cookbook.

2. Many times, recipes from chefs in particular are mathamatically scaled down, but never tested. As a result, they don't work.

3. Very few recipes are proofread. The number of printed recipes that contain errors in the ingredient list, the directions, or both is greater than the number that don't. This problem is even worse on internet recipe sites.
There also seems to be an interesting correlation: The greater the celebrity of the chef, the less likely he (or she) has proofread the recipes.

4. Despite disclaimers to the contrary, I find it difficult to believe that most recipes are kitchen tested. There's just no way so many of them could be so far off if they had been.

5. Cookbooks and magazines with a "health" slant are the worst offenders. I have, for instance, yet to find a single diabetic cookbook whose recipes I trust. I mean, if you try one and there's a problem, it happens. But if you try five, or six, or a dozen, and they're all wrong; and that happens in every book you examine, well----but that's the exact problem you just detailed.

What bothers me most about all this is the number of home cooks who blame themselves when a recipe doesn't work out, when all the time it was the recipe publisher who was to blame.

I laughed at similar recipe books when I was working at chains. I was supposed to sauce a order of wings completely with just 1.5 oz.

I am not a huge fan of recipes (unless were baking, different story then). When we do menu specials, the only thing I have to work with is the typed menu that the customer gets.

Suzanne-

"Oh, and by the way: one author is an MD..."

Brings back an interesting memory:

Forty years or so ago,there was an article in Time magazine about the unjustified self-confidence of MDs. They examined the Federal Aviation Administration's analysis of civil aviation accident statistics, and found that MDs who were licensed pilots had a VERY much higher accident rate than run-of-the-mill private pilots.

Looking at the details of these MDs accidents, they found that the MDs had a greater propensity to fly into conditions for which they were not qualified, ignoring weather reports, violating limitations on their licenses, and the like.

Maybe they don't pay attention to limitations on their culinary qualifications, either. :D

Mike

This reminds me of how rocket scientists can get together to design a complex piece of machinery. They are indeed experts in choosing all the right metal alloys to work well with each other and all of the parts are the precisely correct choice to do the job.

But try and work on that machine or build it from parts and we might soon realize that it was designed on paper and not including trial and error testing.

What really cracks me up with so -called "professional recipies" is the measurements...

Now, for gawds sake how the (delated) do I measure 10 tbsp of butter? Am I really stupid enough to pour 1/3 cup of honey or mollases in a cup, only to pour it out again and then deal with washing out a sticky and dirty measuring cup?

Then there's the cooking magazine mish-mash for so-called professional recipies, gave up laughing about it, gave up writing letters about it. I just accept it as a fact of life, albeit an incredibly stupid one: In all the N.American cooking mags and glossy books chocolate is invariably measured in ounces by weight, sugar in cups, flour sometime in cups but more commonly now by weight (it was discovered in the cooking mags that weighing flour is far more accurate.... Big news, bakers around the world have been doing it since the Egyptians were doing their graffiti thing on pyramid walls...) butter in sticks, tbsps, or cups ( only the US has butter in sticks...) chopped nuts in cups, liquids in cups... Us Canucks are even stupider, we've converted everything to milliliters. Nope, you won't find any weights on CDN recipies. I don't know whether to laugh or cry...

I just look at the recipies and get ideas. If it contains any baking ideas that I want to try out, I drag out my "stupidity conversion table" and convert all the weird-a** measurements to weight measurements, I also automatically deduct 10% of the sugar quantity for any southern US recipie, and rely on my experience.

A professional baker's recipe will only give two items of information: The ingredients, listed in order of working stages, and the weights. Nothing else, it's assumed that the baker knows the procedure and techniques.

I am by no means a prof baker; in fact, I hate baking for the most part. Therefore my copied recipes are reduced to their simplest form- ings listed in order of appearance and usually saying something like "combine dry, mix wet, combine all. (usually for simple cakes or muffins). I hired a CIA trained baker with an impressive resume who was getting back into the business after a long hiatus (now I know the whys of the hiatus). This woman COULD NOT follow my recipes. She had no idea what I meant. After she left, I found her notes on my recipes that said things like, "mix butter until light and fluffy, add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition...."

I do not miss her one bit!

I like this part Suzanne. :)

Hmm... that means, 3/8ths... hm, nope, 2/17th... wait, first, take one onion and divide by three that's 1/3, two times that, and then how do I quarter a third?

I think I need a two fifths of vodka. :D :D

ok, turn it around......magazines that bastardize your recipes. Change techniques or ingredients, talk about frustrating. I tested out my recipes at least 3x with an assitant taking notes on measurements, timing (30 minute recipes), etc.....send them in and things are changed, stuff that would have saved time (like wilting spinach in a microwave) or switching pad thai noodles for rice stick. Got to the point after talking to several authors that I realized when you sell recipes they then belong to the publisher for all intense purposes except each time they reprint you get money. :)

I cannot tell you how many times I've stood at a kitchen door with pencil and paper in hand writing out "recipes" for a chef who didn't pull something they already had in the "can" to something new.......threats of showing up in CA for a long overdue recipe worked but to have to resort to that is not fun.....Authors are usually the best, just send me the book and I'll work with you on which works best logistically for the stage.

several years ago a self-published then published author was on tour.....her name escapes me.
Before and After pix on the spiral bound soft cover....the recipes were horrendous. can of tomato sauce, package of seasoning glooped on a chicken breast and baked.....this is the jist, recipes were better written ingredient list was not any better. Through all the years of going to author events, she was the one who gave the best info on how to market and sell a cookbook. Amazing....she traveled to small towns, self promoted, finally by the 3rd book got on QVC and sold huge quantities in minutes....a publisher contacted her and she was on her 4 or 5 cookbook with multiple printings.
Total junk. But she knew her audience, she knew how and who to sell to, she worked it. After listening to her I realized that writing a cookbook is step one there are a whole lot more steps to getting it sold.....and most of it you have to do yourself.

Shroom, I immediately thought of Sandra Lee. :rolleyes:

Suzanne, the world is a better place because of your work. I can only imagine how frustrating your work can be! How prevalent is this problem? Surely there are some who know what they're doing....?

Suzanne-I feel your pain-I also do some work testing, editing and rewriting recipes forwarded to me by food editors, nutritionists and such. Quite a number of my jobs involve testing recipes for a magazine that relies on readers to submit them for publication. You would not believe what gets submitted! Some readers tear out pages of magazines, or photocopy recipes from books and send them in, others are written so cryptically that I can barely figure out what I'm supposed to do. I have also found recipes submitted as original that are direct lifts from work done by people I know.

But really, some of the absolute worst are recipes written by professional chefs that assume the average cook has specialized equipment (12 3" blini pans, for example), know what "bain marie" means or that people have a quart of demiglace just hanging about in the back of their fridge, waiting to be used. Chefs-don't take this personally. I used to be among your ranks, and it took me a while to adjust my development and writing style so that it's useful to the average homecook.

Regarding some of the other posts here, I have to defend my profession a bit. I do a lot of recipe testing and development for different types of editorial venues, from magazines to small cookbooks for people suffering from kidney disease, diabetes, celiac, lactose intolerance among others. The key to making these recipes useful is a close COLLABORATION between the culinary pro (me) and the medical and dietary pro (doctors and RDs.) Thankfully, the ones I work with understand this collaboration, value my expertise and understand the limitations of their training.

The other key to success of a recipe for the generalized consumer market is an understanding of the people that make up that market-the money they have to spend on ingredients, the time they have, familiarity with and availability of ingredients, their particular regional style amid myriad others. A recipe developed for Gourmet might be very different from one developed for First for Women because the people that buy and use the recipes published in those magazines come from very different market demographics.

Due to the reality of the average American home cook's kitchen and training and our cultural history, it's unrealistic to assume that the cook will use a scale to measure ingredients. It's just not part of the average culinary vernacular in this country-people measure by volume. Chefs and foodies-you need to get over it and learn to adapt.

KYH- I think your comments are a little harsh, though I agree with you on many of your points. Blanket statements condemming all magazines for sloppy testing and inaccuracy are just incorrect and unfair. Food sections of magazines can be real drivers of sales for a rag. Some magazines invest a lot of money in testing and development, but are then so constrained by space limitation imposed by copy editors and last minute ad sales that the recipes really suffer. Other magazines have development and testing staff, but seem to only hire culinary wannabes that have no solid training (either culinary or marketing) so the recipes wind up not being very good. Sometimes, you encounter both staffing and editorial problem, but these always vary from publisher to publisher. Some magazines use a "style sheet" that defines the way a recipe should be written and how measurements are done. Again, these can be inconsistent throughout the industry.

I know this is a rambling comment, but I thought I could shed a little light and perspective on why so many inconsistencie arise with published recipes. Really, I think it boils down to the fact that cooking in America is mostly without strong style tradition and standardization. We are gradually working in that direction, but the drawback can be that with standardization also comes culinary rigidness and stagnancy. Striking a balance between these competing forces is always a difficult and demanding exercise.

Mezz it was not Sandra Lee, but she's one I learned alot from also.....her radio/newspaper interviews I sat in on were amazing.....food was not but marketing was dead on.

>KYH- I think your comments are a little harsh,<

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by harsh, FoodFoto. I wasn't expressing an opinion; merely passing along some observations.

While your list of reasons may shed light on why so many recipes are incorrect, it doesn't change the basic fact that they are. And that's all the ultimate reader cares about: Is this recipe correct? If I follow it, as presented, will my dish turn out the way the magazine---book---webpage---newspaper column says it will? If not, the venue is being editorially irresponsible. Having been an editor for more years than I care to think about, to me this is just reprehensible.

>But really, some of the absolute worst are recipes written by professional chefs that assume the average cook has specialized equipment (12 3" blini pans, for example)....., <

While this is a very real, very common problem, and one that frustrates many home cooks, it doesn't bother me as much as recipes that are out and out wrong. If I read a recipe that says I need a dozen conical molds, for instance, and then try and make that dish without having them, then it's my fault, not the chef's, when it doesn't work out.

As you noted, recipes are written to their expected audience. For instance, I'm a great admirer of Heinz Beck. But anybody who thinks his books are directed to the home cook is fooling themself.

>Blanket statements condemming all magazines for sloppy testing and inaccuracy are just incorrect and unfair.<

Considering that I never made such a blanket condemnation, this statement reflects more on your reading skills than on my writing ability.

To me, a recipe is only a road map, not a list of detailed instructions. It is rare for me to actually follow one.
With baking, I am more careful, as thats pretty much 'chemistry', but for other dishes, the recipe is a point of departure, not the journey.

When I write down a recipe for one of the dishes I create, my biggest problem is assuming that others know what I mean. I often leave out steps, or don't explain proceedures that I feel are elementary. Still, I write them down for myself, and only give one away if asked.

Sorry KYH, I realized that I attributed the "blanket statements" comment to you when those statements actually came in subsequent postings. I guess what I meant by "harsh" was just a feeling I got from the general tone of your posts, which kind of come across as overly critical and vague. I'm not exactly sure what you mean when you describe a recipe as being "out and out wrong". Do you mean that ingredients are not listed in order of use or are missing from the deck; or that ingredients are listed in the deck, but no instructions for their use are included in the text? of something else? That's definately a proofreading/copy/editing issue and, in the periodical world, can happen anywhere down the chain from developer/writer to the final copy & paste-up editor.

I think some distinctions should be drawn between recipes published in magazines, cookbooks and websites as these businesses are managed and marketed very differently. Anybody can throw up a website and call themselves an internet chef. Those recipes, though plentiful are generally not reliable and, as any information gleaned from the internet should be double and triple checked.

Publishing a cookbook is a tricky process. First the author submits a query letter (which includes a brief description of the cookbook, who it should appeal to, a table of contents and 3-4 recipes) to a literary agent. If the agent is interested, then they shop it around to see if any publishers are willing to pick it up and advance some money to the cookbook author to finish the book. If that happens, the author better be ready to have the book done PDQ before the publisher looses interest. This scenario leads to slapdash testing, usually done by the author or his/her friends with similar cooking styles-not really objective, in my view. Then, hopefully, talented editors like Suzanne are brought aboard to fact check and edit the recipes for the target market. Unfortunately, this is not always done leading to bad cookbooks. Thankfully, these cookbooks do not generally get favorable reviews or recommendations resulting in poor sales and few, if any, subsequent editions.

From my experience, most magazines that include recipes, and especially ones that are food oriented-Savuer, Gourmet, Martha, Bon Ap, and the like have very talented food editors and development staff. They invest a lot of money in R&D and do a pretty good job of recipe checking. A few mistakes slip through from time to time. The ones to be careful of are the cheap, general consumer type magazines that cover fashion, crafts, hairdos, sex advice, and lots of human interest stories as well as a food section. I style the food for quite a few of these and always run into problems with the recipes. I send my changes and recommendations to the editors, but who knows if they ever make it back to copy. Thus, another consumer is frustrated when trying a new recipe.

All this really boils down to the fact that there is no standardization of recipes or cooking techniques or even general agreement between professionals as to how they should be presented. Heck, there's little agreement between pro chefs as to how dishes should be made. I've witnessed downright fistfights between chefs about how buerre blanc or pesto should be made. The culinary arena is a fluid one where craft, presentation and public expectations are constantly changing and in a state of flux. There is really only one thing one can do---take it all with a grain of salt, and open a bottle of wine.

En vino veritas

"All this really boils down to the fact that there is no standardization of recipes or cooking techniques or even general agreement between professionals as to how they should be presented. Heck, there's little agreement between pro chefs as to how dishes should be made. I've witnessed downright fistfights between chefs about how buerre blanc or pesto should be made. The culinary arena is a fluid one where craft, presentation and public expectations are constantly changing and in a state of flux. There is really only one thing one can do---take it all with a grain of salt, and open a bottle of wine.

En vino veritas[/QUOTE]"

The problem with that thought is in situations where the recipes are geared not to the proffessional but to "Joe Average" who is trying to get dinner on the plate. I think that there is a majour disjuncture between the "recipe consummer" and "recipe producer" at this time. Not all cook books / magazines are geared to the trades, or rather, the people who actually have to deal with the recipes day in, day out. Likewise, publications that target the "home cook" often muddy the waters by trying to add the cache of famous chefs/restaurant grade cooking. The general public is more "food savy" these days (by that, I mean my Mom) in so far as they get the food network in their cable bundle and can ryhme off terminology like nobody's business but have little or know idea what they are actually talking about.

Publishers need to take a strong line in this. Who are they publishing for? What is their audience? I don't expect a first grader to be reading "Gravity's Rainbow" any more than an English Lit. Master Student to do a thesis on Dick and Jane. Neither work work is better or worse for their intedended audience but the bottom line is that it has to make sence for that audience and to **** with anybody else.

--Allan (former Librarian, go figure)

In 2/3rds? :D

Getting back to to foodn'foto about "just getting used to measuring by volume", I need to broaden out a little. The first thing I have to make clear is that measuring by weight has been around for at least 3,000 years, if not more, and the U.S. and Canada are the only (albeit modern...) countries to refuse to acknowledge this when it comes to home cooks. Why?

When you go to the supermarket, is your meat sold by the piece? In the deli dept, is cheese sold by liquid measurement? Bread and pastry? Butter and cream cheese? Bacon, coffee? How about Cornflakes? (this product is sold by weight, not volume, some settling of the contents...) No, quite alot of our ingredients are sold by the pound, and no one is complaining, everyone can comprehend and get by just fine. So it's not a strange or European concept, is it?

Now, take a look at the cooking mags, look at the glossy adds: $200 knives, $400 mixers, $5 and $20,000 ranges and cooktops. People ain't cheap when they buy toys for their hobbies in the kitchen. So what's a $50.00 scale compared to a $400 Kitchenaid?.

Now, take a look at the readers of the cooking mags and books. It'd be a very dangerous thing to stereo-type them as Betty Crocker style housewives. So who's an average reader? Dunno, could be a computer programmer, could be a Registered Nurse, could be a Teacher or Law enforcement officer, could be a M.E.N.S.A member, maybe even the Trailer Park boys. Anyone crazy enough (like a magazine editor...) to say that all these people are stupid, and even though we know that there is a far superior way way of measuring ingredients, we will "dumb down" to them and pretend it doesn't exist because we believe they're eejits who are incapable of using such a system and can't comprehend the concept of weights, even though they buy their ingredients by weight, and many professionals (i,e medical and research fields) use weights in their fields every day?

Ask any serious hobby cook or baker if they want to improve on thier skills, make fewer mistakes, make accurate and quick measurements, and less time for clean-up, what would they say? I'd say that most, if not all would scream for us to show them, and be a little put-out for not showing them earlier.

Don't get me wrong--I was trained by a Swiss-Austrian chef and we measured everything in metric. Ks, gs, dcl, ls are all SO much easier to handle once you stop trying to convert to pounds & cups, and have a rough picture in your head of how much each measure amounts to. Why the US refuses to convert to metric is beyond me, but I go along to get along. I'ts just not worth it to keep trying to swim up that stream.

I think the answer to that question lies in the history of the development of our two countries. Reading a little about the colonization process and westward expansion of the US reveals a little window into why the home cook uses predominantly volume measurements. The former Europeans who settled in our country and moved westward were largely a transient lot. Those who maintained their lives in settled communities often had to live amidst civil unrest and war. These two factors greatly influenced how home tasks were approached.
Many people set up for a while in one community, then moved on as better opportunities arose elsewhere. They, by necessity, had to use tools for multiple purposes. Scales were large, cumbersome, delicate and easily damaged making them unsuitable for use when traveling. The cook used what was at hand for mixing up the (relatively) simple recipes of the time. When these recipes were eventually recorded, the measurements reflected what tools people used- usually teacups, teaspoons and soup spoons. This practice became self-perpetuating as these measurements became standardized and cookbooks became more available to the masses.
Now this style of measuring has become what I like to refer to as the general American "culinary vernacular." Most people understand it and it's just part of the culture.

That was then, and this is now. I'd love to see a shift to using weights to measure when cooking, and preferably metric (makes scaling up and down much easier. Who can't divide by 10?) But how do I as a recipe developer do that? If I developed all my recipes in pounds and ounces, or kilos and deciliters, no one would hire me again. If a publisher only published cookbooks using such measures, only professional chefs would buy them, and frankly, chefs are not a reliable cookbook market.

I believe the key to the change is bringing updated and dynamic home economics curricula back into the public schools. It's sorely needed as most kids do not learn cooking, nutrition, simple repair, or home accounting from their families anymore. It would be a terrific vehicle for kids to learn practical living skills that so many do not have even after graduating from college. It would also be a good place to start changing the culinary practices that lead to so much trouble. Sadly, these are the types of programs that are cut first when school boards must tighten budgets.

The key to change is very simple:


Dual columns for ingredient measurements.



Surely the editors can afford a little column space?

No big speeches, no introductions, nothing, just a column with measurements by volume and a column for ingredients by weight. C.I.A. does it in their "Professional Chef". Maybe an explanation here and there that measuring by weight is far more accurate, you know, basically a re-hash of the same schitck from the cooking mags, who ironically only give one ingredient by weight, i.e flour, and then all other dry ingredients (sugar, coca, etc.) by volume...

People ain't stupid. They buy flour by the pound, sugar by the pound, butter by the pound, vegetables and fruit by the pound. If you offer them an option to weigh out their ingredients they'll use it, but first you have to offer it to them.

You all make some very good points, but when a scale costs $50 and a set of measuring cups costs $5, which is the average home cook going to use?

It's already being done - I've seen quiote a few recipes wqritten in that way.

Shel

I've seen that in several books and magazines, also recipes with metric conversions.

shel