Cookaholics Bulletin Board

So, recently Epicurious did a thing about common recipe screw-ups:

http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguide ... -make.html

... which Lindsay blogged and added a couple of her own:

http://www.eatyourbooks.com/blog/2014/1 ... ed-recipes

So I'm gonna add one of my own, which I see a bunch and drives me bananas:

Scaling Math Errors: many professional cooks start from large-output professional kitchen recipes and scale them down. And then ... they don't test the scaled down recipe, which means they miss the fact that they divided the sugar by 4 but the flour by 8, and left the salt at the original "serves 20" quantity. Or they don't stop to think that some ingredients (water, in particular) don't scale linearly.

This aggravates me because it shows that the writer and their publisher didn't test the recipe at all, which to me shows contempt for their readers.

So, what's your most hated chronic published recipe mistake?

"white wine" I've mentioned this before but when recipes specify one type of ingredient versus another (red vs. yellow vs. green peppers, etc.) and then say "white wine" I know either that the cook really doesn't care or it really doesn't matter. If you taste sauvignon blanc vs. gewurtztraminer vs. chardonnay vs. .... there is a tremendous difference. However, generally I find that the addition of any white wine is superfluous, often I just add more chicken broth Seriously. Red wine is a completely different beast and does need specification. End of rant!

Also, recipes (especially guilty is CI), that require many sequential steps that could very easily be done simultaneously. HELLO! I have 4 burners and many pots and pans. Honestly, I really can boil something while I fry something; amazingly, i can also cut something while those are taking place. Obviously, reading the entire recipe first helps you plan but many recipes, especially CI, use that awful word "then, ..." implying that the preceding step must be completed prior to the next. This does not affect me anymore but I am considering the less experienced.

I think the blogger needs to find a new source of recipes where onions are of “yellow cooking” variety unless otherwise specified and a small onion weights 4oz and produces one-half cup of fine dice, and canned tomatoes are poked, prodded, ranked, taste tested and specified to annoying precision.

When it comes to wine, Julia kept saying that one should never cook with wine they wouldn’t drink and Molto Mario was of the opinion that by the time white whine was heated, simmered, and reduced there was nothing left of the original flavor components of the wine except the alcohol and the acid. Over the years, I have wandered more into Mario’s camp and use those little 175 ml four pack wines or Gallo vermouth for deglazing pans.

I find that same thing in bakery cookbooks. In Flour, all the cupcakes say it makes 12 standard, but it really makes 24! The two layer cakes will overflow even 3 inch high pans. It makes 3 layers obviously.

Plus, quite a few recipes that include no salt. I don't believe that for a minute.

All,

I was reading Sunset in the bathroom this AM, and was reminded of another recipe mistake which sends me into fits. This is one which is pretty much magazines and newspapers only: Over-Condensation. This happens when, to meet space requirements, the editors abbreviate and reword the recipe to be smaller, making the instructions indecipherable or just plain wrong in the process.

This Sunset recipe issue, for example, has a recipe for cashew-coconut curry which for some reason requires two pans. Some ingredients are cooked in one pan, some in another ... but due to trimming down the instructions, it's impossible to figure out which things are supposed to go in which pan, or even why you need two pans in the first place. Saveur, a couple years ago, had a legendary make-your-own-ricotta cheese recipe which resulted in over 100 phone calls to Cheesemaking.com, because the shrinking of the recipe had resulted in instructions which yielded milk porridge.

tmi...

Amy

What, doesn't everyone read in the bathroom?!

Once, in the dark ages, my mother found a bag of flour in the bathroom. "Why," she asked, "is there flour in the bathroom?" My brother answered, "There wasn't anything else to read." We all understood.

Mary

Well, I do crosswords, but I'm strange.