I also grew up with the metric/ pound change. For temperatures, someone told me:
Multiply Centigrade by 2 and add 30. Answer is Fahrenheit Eg. 20 C x 2 = 40 +30 = 70 F. Sometimes it's out a degree or 2 but helps me cause I still think in F.
For Km when driving. Multiply by .6, and drop the last digit 100 km x.6= 600. Drop the last digit is 60 miles
I'm at a high altitude - most recipes, especially baking ones, are garbage for me. My major beef though is that there is an ingredient list - fantastic, then the narrative of the recipe does not restate the quantity of the ingredient(s) needed at that phase. I do try to set aside the quantities, but given that most recipes now seem to need 5 pages of narrative, restating quantity would be nice.
+++ gluten free baking recipes NEVER have enough liquid - I'm not sure the person ever even baked the recipe...
As a once professional cook, the multi-tasking (or more accurately: rapid task-switching) is a real thing that can be accomplished. However, putting it in a recipe intended for the lay cook is, as you suggest, a non-starter.
This list is really helpful as I embark on writing my own cookbook. Describing with senses makes a better recipe for sure. I want to push back on #6 though. It depends on who the audience is. I don't think every recipe needs to be a teaching moment. I think recipe writers can decide the level of handholding they want to commit to. Not everyone wants to worry about nailing the exact Crayola color.
One pet peeve of mine: can people please stop the self-righteous, bossy labeling of ingredients in recipes like "free-range", "organic", "sustainably-sourced". If it's not going to affect the end result then let me decide which kind of butter I want to use, thank you!
Decades ago I made a birthday cake from scratch in my early 20’s from a cookbook everyone was raving about. There was obviously a typo on the butter amount. It came out bubbling in fat. My then husband whipped it out into the four lane highway from our porch and it landed with a splat that left grease marks that lasted for months!
My worst cookbook error story: It was during the 1976 great blizzard in Boston, we'd been housebound for 3 days and beginning to scrape out the last of what was in the pantry. Found a recipe for some granola/fruit bar type baked good for which we had (barely) the ingredients. Come to the last step before baking: "Add 3 CUPS of vegetable oil." Need I say I was very young and inexperienced at cooking? I added it. Ended up with an oily mess, inedible, all those ingredients wasted. Wrote to the cookbook author/publishers. Got a letter in return. "Oh, it was supposed to be 3 TABLESPOONS of oil." No apology, we saw later editions with no correction. Grrrr. Still mad.
Your oven doesn’t need that much foreplay made me actually laugh out loud. 😆 I made almost all of these mistakes in the early recipes on my own site. Now, a huge part of my job is just going back through and making sure every recipe has clear formatting and robust instructions. I’m grateful for all I’ve learned in 15 years, but geesh it’s painful to look back at some of my early recipes! I’ve always thought we should list a prep time and then a “you have small children or adhd” prep time, because the time it takes if you’re totally undistracted and the time it actually takes the average person surrounded by varying levels of chaos is very different.
Agree with the consistency for measurements, with one caveat. When I'm making bread and it calls for butter, I'm leaving that at tbsp/cups.
0) it tastes like shit
Gas mark 5?!
I also grew up with the metric/ pound change. For temperatures, someone told me:
Multiply Centigrade by 2 and add 30. Answer is Fahrenheit Eg. 20 C x 2 = 40 +30 = 70 F. Sometimes it's out a degree or 2 but helps me cause I still think in F.
For Km when driving. Multiply by .6, and drop the last digit 100 km x.6= 600. Drop the last digit is 60 miles
I'm at a high altitude - most recipes, especially baking ones, are garbage for me. My major beef though is that there is an ingredient list - fantastic, then the narrative of the recipe does not restate the quantity of the ingredient(s) needed at that phase. I do try to set aside the quantities, but given that most recipes now seem to need 5 pages of narrative, restating quantity would be nice.
+++ gluten free baking recipes NEVER have enough liquid - I'm not sure the person ever even baked the recipe...
As a once professional cook, the multi-tasking (or more accurately: rapid task-switching) is a real thing that can be accomplished. However, putting it in a recipe intended for the lay cook is, as you suggest, a non-starter.
This list is really helpful as I embark on writing my own cookbook. Describing with senses makes a better recipe for sure. I want to push back on #6 though. It depends on who the audience is. I don't think every recipe needs to be a teaching moment. I think recipe writers can decide the level of handholding they want to commit to. Not everyone wants to worry about nailing the exact Crayola color.
One pet peeve of mine: can people please stop the self-righteous, bossy labeling of ingredients in recipes like "free-range", "organic", "sustainably-sourced". If it's not going to affect the end result then let me decide which kind of butter I want to use, thank you!
Decades ago I made a birthday cake from scratch in my early 20’s from a cookbook everyone was raving about. There was obviously a typo on the butter amount. It came out bubbling in fat. My then husband whipped it out into the four lane highway from our porch and it landed with a splat that left grease marks that lasted for months!
Sandra Lee grew up dirt poor and never forgot it so she tried to share recipes that people on a tight budget could afford. Don’t knock her.
Agree with all these! Can I also add recipes that don’t specify whether oven temperatures are for fan or conventional ovens. It drives me insane.
My worst cookbook error story: It was during the 1976 great blizzard in Boston, we'd been housebound for 3 days and beginning to scrape out the last of what was in the pantry. Found a recipe for some granola/fruit bar type baked good for which we had (barely) the ingredients. Come to the last step before baking: "Add 3 CUPS of vegetable oil." Need I say I was very young and inexperienced at cooking? I added it. Ended up with an oily mess, inedible, all those ingredients wasted. Wrote to the cookbook author/publishers. Got a letter in return. "Oh, it was supposed to be 3 TABLESPOONS of oil." No apology, we saw later editions with no correction. Grrrr. Still mad.
My fave? Caramelize the onions (5 minutes).
😆
I'm told the cooking school in my city teaches RTFRF…read the fn recipe first.
When you do that, the pan juggling, secret prep and missing ingredients are easier to find.
My preference is for bullet point steps but some of my favourite recipes are multiple steps in paragraphs so sometimes I annotate my book.
Your oven doesn’t need that much foreplay made me actually laugh out loud. 😆 I made almost all of these mistakes in the early recipes on my own site. Now, a huge part of my job is just going back through and making sure every recipe has clear formatting and robust instructions. I’m grateful for all I’ve learned in 15 years, but geesh it’s painful to look back at some of my early recipes! I’ve always thought we should list a prep time and then a “you have small children or adhd” prep time, because the time it takes if you’re totally undistracted and the time it actually takes the average person surrounded by varying levels of chaos is very different.
I had no idea where tht Sandra Lee recipe was going but I did watch the entire thing and it just got stranger and stranger lol
I used to test recipes from chefs and this is spot on! Just because they’re on TV doesn’t mean jack. 😂😂😂😂