I have a few egregious examples...the latest is duck rillettes, from Paula Wolfert's The Cooking of Southwest France. After skinning the ducks and rendering the fat, the reader is instructed to chop up the duck carcass for cooking, which has the effect of creating a gazillion teeny tiny bone shards which must be painstakingly picked out by hand before mixing the meat with the reserved fat. Ugh. I spent all afternoon picking through it.

So, tell me your worst recipe stories. Missing ingredients? Poorly written directions? Takes a week to make and not worth the time?

Oh, man. Where to start? I don't have the original "Silver Palate" Cookbook. I DO have, however, "The Silver Pale Good Times Cookbook." Let's leave it with the Bolognese Sauce, which is for 6 to 8 "portions." The recipe calls for 2 POUNDS Italian sausage and 2 POUNDS of ground beef, 2 cans (28 oxz. EACH), 2 (6 oz.) cans of tomato paste, etc., etc. To make enough sauce for pasta for 6 to 8 people. I DON'T THINK SO. Twenty people, maybe.

I won't forgive the Babbo cookbook for some early failures due to flat-out-wrong instructions in it (though I feel better after Bill Buford had some very uncomplimentary things to say about it in Heat). Before I knew much of anything about cooking (and especially pastry), I tried the saffron panna cotta recipe. It instructs you to stir powdered gelatin directly into the cream you just boiled and steeped for a few minutes. Guess what happens...

Wow, that's ugly. What's killing me about this duck recipe is that if I had given it a moment's thought there's no way I would have followed the recipe as written.

And Barbara, 4 lbs. of meat for 6 people is insane.

This is true. Unfortunately, the entire book has this kind of insanity sprinkled through it. Why it is still on the shelf, I can't explain. I don't believe there is a single recipe in it that is a keeper.

The Dionne Lucas Cookbook recipe I used for rolled, stuffed boneless leg of lamb, which called for pork sausage in the stuffing. Well, if I had spent a moment thinking, I would have realized that the only way that raw pork sausage stuffing was going to get cooked, is if the lamb were well-done all the way through. Since the French like medium-rare lamb (so do I) I decided that she must have meant COOKED pork sausage in the stuffing, just forgot to say so. I ended up slicing the lamb and putting it into the broiler to cook the stuffing. One of my dinner guests pulled the stuffing out and didn't eat it, even though it was cooked.

This is an issue that I have with Mario's cookbooks. While I enjoy them, his idea of portion size is entirely different than mine. I've taken to calling them "Mario portions" and the usual multiplier is at least 2.

I'll bite. What happens?

Gelatin needs to be rehydrated in a cool liquid first. You dump it straight into a hot liquid and it solidifies into little pellets. At the time, I figured it was something I did wrong (maybe not stirring fast enough, etc), so I tried it another two times with the same results.

The proportion of dry ingredients to wet ingredients for the carrot cake roulade in the Kinkead's cookbook is wrong. I made this dessert for a Father's Day dinner and luckily, I had the sense to do a trial run of the dessert before the actual dinner (I ended up making the cake 4 times!). After some research on the internet, I tweaked the recipe and cake was a huge hit!

My boyfriends mother put together a family cookbook for him as a college graduation present. I joke that it's a ploy to make him call home more often since she omitted all sorts of stuff from the recipes. You never know if a recipe will miss an ingredient, time, temperature or amount. We can't help but laugh every time we cook from it.

He hates my Joy of Cooking book since the recipes reference other recipes with in the book. It drives him crazy flipping between multiple pages to create one item.

We once tried to make an arugula soup that called for frying arugula and crumbling it up in to the soup base. I'll just say frying arugula to a crisp isn't my specialty but I can't make one heck of an ash tasting arugula soup.

Years ago someone gave me the "Mayberry Cookbook." I thought it was cute as it claimed these were Aunt Bea's actual recipes and if anyone has watched the show, you know how much Andy and Opie loved her food.

Well let me tell ya........Andy and Opie could not have had tastebuds. I tried at least four recipes from that blasted book and they were all just awful. Now I would say if I only tried one recipe and it didn't work out, then it was simply an editing issue, but four? I tossed that bad boy in our booksale at the library. And I pity the poor soul who bought it.

I've actually seen this cookbook and flipped through it, while laughing. Cookbooks prove Barnum's adage that "There's a sucker born every minute."

Bad cookbooks could be a thread unto themselves and I have given away plenty of them. Funny that Chris mentioned the Babbo cookbook, because one I gave away was Batali's "Simple Italian Cooking" because there wasn't a single recipe in it that looked appealing.

The ones that look wonderful and don't reveal their flaws until you actually make something are worse, especially if it's something with a lot of expensive ingredients.

Every potato- specific cookbook I've owned (and there have been several, since I love potatoes), has had numerous problematic recipes. I've subsequently gotten rid of all of them, so I can't give specifics . I'm usually fairly good at determining the quality of recipes before purchasing a cookbook, but a large percentage of my misses have been with potato cookbooks. I think I may be cured of purchasing them now (but if anyone can recommend a good potato cookbook, let me know )

I've started going back through my cookbooks with the aim of making at least three previously unmade recipes from each. I thought this was going to help me figure out which books to weed out, but, instead, I've found a number of previously undiscovered good recipes.

Back in the Dark Ages when I was an assitant manager at the Kitchen Bazaar on Conn. Ave.,our favorite lunch break was to peruse the cookbooks. I remember finding a recipe including salt cod,which I love. It called for the cod to be soaked over night changing the water every hour. Now that's what I call commitment!

I still miss Kitchen Bazaar and sigh every time I pass the place where it used to be (on my way to Calvert Woodley!). We still use two small paperback cookbooks we found there--one on pasta and one on Cajun and Creole food. The Kitchen Aid mixer I bought there on sale is going strong after all this time.

From a recipe I tried this weekend: a blackberry-habandero sauce. See if you can figure out what's missing: blend bunch of cilantro, 1/2 juice of lemon, cucumber, blackberries (10-15), habanero, carrot and ginger. Add blended sauce to pan and cook (protein). Turn down heat to medium until (protein) is done, make sure to keep stirring because the sauce will dry up if it sits for too long.

There is no liquid in this damned thing, other than the juice of 1/2 lemon. The sauce dries up as soon as it hits the pan. I kept adding wine and water (I drank all the wine ) to get enough liquid to poach the protein. Also, the recipe called for 2 habaneros; I seeded and used only one. Even so, it was one spicey dish.

That's what I get for getting recipes off the Internet.

Does anyone else have an opinion wiith regard to the efficacy of Julia Child's recipe for beef pot roast on page 243 of "The Way to Cook?" It sort of makes you wonder if she ever tried it.

Other than bottom round not being the best cut for this treatment, no. Well, it would probably take a lot longer than stated. What's your thought, JG?

Back when I was a yute, my "go to" cookbook was Great Good Food by Julie Rosso. I had very little cooking experience, so seeing a recipe like this didn't faze me:

Lime Chicken Strips

90 minutes of cooking at 350 degrees for some little slices of chicken breast? My friends politely gnawed on the chicken when I offered them up.

The same as yours. Using a bottom round roast for a pot roast is a recipe for a dried out piece of meat.

Wait, I missed this when you first posted. Every hour? Damn. I didn't even have to get up hourly with my newborns...no way am I doing it for salt cod.

ETA: the duck rillettes had good flavour, but picking over ruined the texture.

Grrr. This is as much of a nuisance as bad recipes: figuring out how to resolve a problem with a poorly written recipe and then not noting what you did for future reference . A couple of years ago, I tried making the low-sodium beef stock recipe from The Rittenhouse Cookbook, which is a heart-healthy restaurant cookbook. It came out really well, except the recipe lists an ingredient and then does not say what to do with it. I had forgotten this until I just opened the book again to make a new batch . Whatever I did last time worked well, but what was it?

My wife likes pristine cookbooks, but mine have writing and highlights all over them. If something took twice as long to cook, or a prep was unclear, it's written in the margin. I even have cookbooks with recipes crossed out because they were so bad I didn't want to forget and try to make it again.

I just saw Joe's post in the Kinkead's thread about an omission in the cookbook recipe for Portuguese Seafood Stew. I printed out a copy of a recipe online which included the reduction of the seafood liquid. I'll keep it in my copy of the book in case I make the recipe. I thought a mention in this thread might be in order.

This is a copy of the recipe with the reduction included

I love Marcella Hazan's cookbooks, but I generally don't trust any of her recipes. In Marcella Cucina, for example, she has a beef stew recipe on page 313 where the beef chuck gets cooked till very tender, about 1 hour. A beginning cook might plan a dinner party around this recipe and have some very hungry guests before the beef was tender. The previous beef stew recipe, on p. 311, gives two hours of cooking the beef chuck, which is still probably not enough, but regardless, they can't both be correct.

I can't remember many incompetent recipes in the book, but I do remember how horrid that overly earnest, misguided phase of Americanized cuisine minceur was. There's an all-purpose lower-calorie dairy whip you're supposed to blend, made of cottage cheese or some other awful stuff, and then use as a substitute for heavy cream, sour cream, and all sorts of superior ingredients.

I think I kept the book for two excellent recipes: one for Dirty Rice with black beans and another for Acorn Squash Soup with lentils--though certainly when you're boiling peeled winter squash, you could make your life easier by chosing a different kind of squash.



Well, I could definitely see your point on these instructions since any good Italian braise should take around three hours. However, I wouldn't essentialize on this basis. As far as I'm concerned, Dr. Hazan is to be worshipped for clear, simple (if sometimes complicated or time-consuming) instructions in recipes that dealt well with what was and was not available to home cooks in the US 20-30 years ago. There are only two recipes in her Classic--now Essentials--cookbooks that I dislike: carbonara (not authentic & a bit greasy) and eggplant parmigiana (greasy), though the latter, altered, is the basis of what I do to this day. Until I discovered The Splendid Table, Hazan's ragu was on my short list of favorite things to eat in the world no matter who's cooking. I'd still make it if I have ground beef, but no veal, pork, pancetta, prosciutto and Italian sausage hanging around the house.

Great topic, Heather.

The first edition of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything has a lot of errors, though it had gotten to the point where I wondered if cookbook authors felt that, just like a certain kind of rug woven by nomads in Afghanistan, each effort had to have a few flaws to ward off the evil eye. For example, you're told to add the tomatoes "now" in a recipe for coq au vin. Why in coq au vin? Nor are they listed as an ingredient. Brown bread? You're told instructions for steaming will follow, but they don't.

Michele Urvater won a James Beard award for Monday to Friday, a cookbook that basically told professionals, especially working parents, that it was okay to mix frozen corn into cornmeal and serve the mush for dinner--sort of the Walmart version of Polenta with Fresh Corn in The Zuni Cafe Cookbook--without welling up mit Guilt und Angst. Again, there are a handful of excellent, quick recipes, but among the ones that sound really, really dreadful, there are others that sound kind of good that turn out dry or flavorless or unfortunately flavored. And never stock your pantry with things you're told will make simple, quick desserts in an emergency if you don't normally eat them as is. I finally tossed that expired can of crushed pineapple.

Coincidentally, I came across the same thing with the lamb chili I made yesterday. It was a Bon Appetit recipe that I pulled down from epicurious. It said to braise the lamb for one hour. Needless to say one of the comments on the recipe said it stunk because after only one hour then reducing the sauce for a short time (as per the recipe) the lamb was very tough.

PS - I braised for about 3 hours and the lamb was easily fork "shredable" and it was quite delicious.

The braising for one hour thing makes you wonder whether they actually tested the recipe.

I made the duck rillettes again, very carefully NOT following the chop the carcasss instructions, and they came out much improved. Now my problem with the recipe is the quantity it makes, and what to do with the leftovers. Would rillettes make good ravioli filling?

Yes.

And indeed I don't; as I said, I love Marcella Hazan's cookbooks. Although I've found other glaring errors in various recipes (I wish I'd made a note of them all), her recipes and commentary are supremely educational. She has clearly been blessed with an excellent editor with respect to the prose of her books; I think she has been less fortunate in the recipe-testing area.

Okay, TH. I noticed how many of Hazan's recipes I still haven't made when looking through the volumes the other day.

By the way, are you talking about the original two volumes or the more recent one-volume edition in which, I understand, a number of the recipes have been revised? I thought the revisions accommodated the greater availability of Italian ingredients in the U.S. and lightened some of the fat content. I don't know if changes responded to problems in the original recipes or if any of the alterations were unwise.

Rillettes were a traditional way of preserving meat--old recipes tell you to store the meat in a crock, covered with a hefty layer of duck fat -- it will keep that way in a cool place, like a refrigerator, for a good long time.

They're well sealed with fat. Maybe I'll try freezing it.

I've never owned or used the two original volumes that were combined and revised into Essentials, so I can't say. The braising-chuck-for-1-hour recipe was in Marcella Cucina, although I'm pretty sure I've come across some obvious problems in a few recipes in Essentials. I'll try to get around to providing some specifics, although I'm really REALLY not out to disparage Marcella Hazan, who has taught me more about cooking than anyone but Julia Child, and to whom I am very grateful.

I'm not related, honest.

Anyway, over in the Italian forum of eG, we were discussing polenta. I reported that despite the conventional wisdom among Italians that it takes about 45 minutes to prepare indoors, Hazan requires only 25 minutes for cooking it once the grains are slowly trickled into the simmering water---in the original editions of her books. I wonder if this is due to the one prevalent type of finer cornmeal available to home cooks in Manhattan ca. 1980 and if the revised edition adjusts that time period to recognize wider availability of coarse cornmeal nowadays.

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Using a book by Anna Del Conte last night, I used one of those recipes that tell you what to do with half of one ingredient, then neglects the other half. I just think there are a lot of recipes out there that should have been edited more carefully.

Alton Brown has a overnight Steel Oats recipe that you make in a crockpot. The recipe burned and congelled both times I tried to make it. The results were just crap. I wish authors would provide a website with corrections and updates to their recipes. Most of his stuff works pretty well.

I have a question about a recipe in The Babbo Cookbook and wasn't sure where the best place was to post it. I made the Roasted Beet Farrotto the other night, and it was quite good. There was one puzzling step in the directions, and I'm not sure if it's an error or I'm completely missing something. I'm wondering if anyone else here has made the recipe or has an answer as to why this instruction is given.

When he describes the procedure for boiling the farro, the sentence reads: "Set up an ice bath nearby, and cook the farro in the boiling water until tender yet not completely cooked, about 20 minutes." The next step is to drain the farro and put in a pan with chicken stock to finish cooking. What's the ice bath for? He never mentions it again. It's not to shock the farro so it will stop cooking when you take it out of the water (is it? and that would just make a mess), since you're cooking the farro further right after that. The only other thing I could think of was that maybe it was for the beets, the preparation of which is described in the previous paragraph. That doesn't fit either, though, since those instructions say to wait until the beets are cool enough to handle before peeling. It doesn't like sound they're going into an ice bath either.

I just skipped that step, but I'm still wondering. I'm glad I was paying attention, but it's hardly of catastrophic importance. It wouldn't have wrecked the recipe to have an unused ice bath. At least it would have been right there if I burned myself .

I like foodnetwork and epicurious for just that reason.. you can read comments.

Feel free to add your two bits on Steel Oats.

Far be it from me to criticize Mr. Perfectionist Thomas Keller...but his quiche recipes in Bouchon call for too much salt. The latest offender was the mushroom version I made for Saturday night's dinner. I reduce the salt every time, and every time it's still too much. And I love salt.

Made a creamed onion recipe last night. Nowhere in the recipe does it tell you what to do with the onions after you have peeled them. It does tell you to put the cream sauce and the panko topping in the casserole, but doesn't mention the onions. Yumm-o!!!! Creamy bread crumbs!!!!

Sounds good to me.

I always do a double take when recipes trail off that way. Sometimes I'm even smart enough to make a note so I don't go through the same thing all over again next time I make the recipe. When I made the hush puppy fried chicken Friday for the Nats tailgating, I realized that I had made a note in the digital recipe file that the recipe tells you to cook bacon at the beginning to render fat for frying the chicken (the rest of the fat is butter ) but doesn't say what to do with it after that. The recipe just says to drain, crumble, and reserve the bacon. (I have no problem finding a use for the bacon .)

It's hard work putting a book together, and things slip through. I always try to read recipes to catch things like this, but I'm not so great on followthrough.

I bought a bag of Arrowhead Mills pastry flour the other day, and on the back of the bag there are some recipes. The first is for "pastry pie crust". This is the ingredient list, and I swear I'm not making this up:

1 Cup Arrowhead Mills ® Pastry Flour
6 Tbsp. Hain ® Vegetable Oil (optional)
3 Tbsp. Cold Water

Yes! You can make pastry dough with a cup of flour and 3 tablespoons of water! (I'm not going to type in the instructions, but there's nothing about substituting anything for the vegetable oil if you decide to opt out.) And no salt?

Some may call it cardboard.