How to Tell How Much You Can Trust a Cookbook (Jesse's Recipe Precision Score)

 

Okay, so I review cookbooks a little differently than most reviewers.  My process is better, but a HELL of a lot more time-consuming.  If I recommend a book, I really need to know a lot about it.  I will never recommend (or bash) a book without reading it cover-to-cover.  Some good books have some really wack stuff in them that needs to get called out.  Some really wack books have a couple of hidden gem recipes or hints in them that make them worth picking up for $3, if one is so inclined.  I have numerous cookbooks that have maybe 3 decent recipes in them, and I have a couple that I keep around as a reminder of what NOT to do.  

But the other thing I do, whenever I review a cookbook, is try a few of the recipes.  Some like this charming nonsense, are time capsule period-pieces, so I only tried 2 things, and one of them was out of sheer morbid curiosity.  Some, like this glorious discovery, will be so packed with awesomeness that I'll try out like 13!

And here's the problem.  As a professional chef, I will occasionally (read: frequently) discover a step in a recipe that seems... suspect.  Sometimes, it's obvious that the recipe in question is just wrong.  For instance, if a recipe says to blanch a pound of asparagus in 3 inches of water for 5 minutes, I'll just know that's from before the days of big pot blanching (thank you, Chef Keller), and the first 3 minutes are probably for the water to get the boil back.  I'll see this, and I'll just blanch the asparagus properly.  Ditto whenever a book for home cooks tells me how to poach an egg.  Like, I guess that might work, there, Mr. TV Food Network, but I'm just gonna poach the egg the exact same way I always so, and we'll call it even. 

However, there are other times when a recipe has something that looks wrong, or maybe just counterintuitive, and I won't know whether it's a new discovery, a wasted step, or a recipe for disaster.  This happens in every cookbook.  Every one!  It's impossible to write an entire book of recipes where someone reading them won't either misinterpret a step, or know a better way.  (Okay, okay, In Search of Perfection, by Whittingstall, but that's the exception that proves the rule.)

How is a cookbook reviewer like myself supposed to know how much to trust a cookbook author who seems to have a penchant for folklore over science, or shaky standard-metric conversions, or likes to leave out steps, or just doesn't really know what they're doing all the time?  I propose a new metric, and I'm going to start using it:  The recipe precision score.  Out of 5, a score of 5 will mean that I have high confidence that the recipes will work as written.  (The French Laundry Cookbook and its brothers and cousins are this.)  A score of 1 will mean that every single recipe in the book is suspect, and likely to need adjustment.  (This is not necessarily a bad thing.  Junior League cookbooks from the 50's are like this, as is my beloved Ma Gastronomie, by noted culinary legendary badass Fernand Point.)  It's not always that imprecise recipes are wrong, by any stretch.  Think about those Junior League cookbooks.  They were written by housewives who cooked multiple meals every day.  They were writing for young wives, yeah, but wives who had grown up helping their mothers in the kitchen.  They were writing for people who knew what they were doing.  They leave a lot off the page, and that's fine, you just have to know what you're getting yourself into.  

But let's say I'm reading a cookbook that's somewhere in the middle?  Maybe a book that's 20 years old, so the author's missed a few modern advances, or assumes that no one has a digital thermometer, a gram scale, or a microplane.  Maybe a book that's got 500 recipes in it, and the editors couldn't possibly have rigorously tested them all.  Or sometimes, writers just aren't that precise.  

See, I'm a precision guy.  A Food Network recipe editor once told me that the industrial recipes I wrote were the clearest and most thorough he'd ever read.  True story.  For a long time, I naively thought everyone thought like that, and was continuously flummoxed by 'bad' recipes.  But ultimately, I realized I needed to relax.  Trust my gut.  Know when I needed to fudge a recipe, or modernize it on the fly (roll back a cook time, switch from dry thyme to fresh, etc.).  But still, if I'm reviewing a cookbook, I need a way to know how precise the recipes are.  If I just fudge everything and then give the book a good review, that's not fair to any non-pro's, who I just set up for a fall.

The Scale Itself (Version 1.0, we'll see how this goes)

5/5: Wired Tight.  Jesse has high confidence that the recipes will work as written
4/5: Solid.  Mostly precise, but don't be afraid to tweak.  Trust your skills.
3/5: Average.  Pros, tweak where needed.  Beginners, don't bite off more than you can chew.
2/5: Shaky.  Use this as more of an idea book.  Maybe mine it for ratios or flavor combinations.
1/5: Good F***in' Luck:  A pirate map: it tells you where the treasure is, but not the quicksand.

The Test

No, I have to test my theory.  Whenever I read a cookbook, I'll keep my eyes out for a technique that's insane, or at least obviously wrong.  Then, I'll try it.  It's a win-win.  If the method fails, I'll know that I can be a little less loyal to the recipes, and just include a note in my review to that effect.  Something like "The recipes are good, but not perfectly written.  Beginners, don't be afraid to adjust if something seems wrong.  And professionals, follow your instinct.  If some technique seems suspect, do what you know is right."  I've had PLENTY of really good cookbooks that needed this asterisk.  To be honest, VERY few do not.  (What's funny are that the most precise recipes are at either end of the spectrum.  Keller, Achatz, Richard, they bring the precision from the lens of Michelin starred badassery.  Better Homes and Gardens, however, brings the precision from having a massive and well-trained test kitchen, and from having the recipes being easy, and from having the book geared towards beginners.)

An Example of One that Passed the Test

The brown butter slow-poached asparagus in Alain Passard was HIGHLY SUSPECT.  Cook asparagus for an hour and a half?  Half-in, half-out of butter?  WHAT THE MONKEY NUTS IS THAT?  I was positive it wouldn't work, except it was Alain Goddamn Passard!  So I tried it.  And it worked!  And that gave me the motivation to try out a bunch of other of his crazy recipes, and by and large, they were pretty successful.  (He still left a lot off the page, though.  Not a perfect book, and definitely not at the ticket scalper prices its available for these days.)

And The Reason I am Writing This, One that Did NOT!

I am currently reading (and reviewing) The Gift of Southern Cooking, by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock.  She was a titan of southern cuisine, and he is a formally trained chef, with a better eye for weights and measures, and frankly, a more clear writing style, both for recipes and for flavor text.  (Edna Lewis's older works had all the soul in the world, but weren't easy to cook out of.  And it never feels like Peacock is stealing her thunder, they clearly shared an important personal and professional friendship)  It's been a great read so far, but it came out 19 years ago, and I keep bumping into little technical details that seem... off.  So it was time to do the test.

The Test Itself

Peacock's chicken broth recipe is to get a 2.5-3# chicken, cover it with three quarts of water, add a couple of aromats and a little salt, bring it up to a boil, cover it, and turn it off heat for an hour, then drain.  This just didn't seem like it would work.  I couldn't imagine that the chicken would be all the way cooked, and I wondered whether the stock would be strong enough.

The first problem was where to get a 2.5# chicken.  Harris Teeter, Publix, Whole Foods, every chicken was 3.5#++.  Could I just add extra water?  No, too many variables.  Cut off a leg?  No, the joints of a larger bird would be larger, so the recipe might not work.  In the end, I finally found a Poulet Rouge (2.45#) at a specialty butcher for $6.99/#.  Oh well, in the name of science.

Tried the experiement.  For the control, I poached a whole chicken from the regular grocery(3.75#, and about a third of the price of the heritage bird) at a simmer for an hour.  

The Results

The stock made from the cheap bird at a real simmer was great.  Good body (especially for only an hour), great flavor.  The bird was a bit dry, but I never really cared for poached chicken.  It's all going into chicken salad for my lunch, anyway.  But Scott Peacock's boil-drop-and-cover method?

Bollocks.

The 2.45# bird temped at 167 in the breast, 154-8 at the thigh, and 149 in the broth.  Remember, it had been cooling for an hour, but I had no way of knowing if the thigh joints had ever gotten to temp (160-165).  So I cut into it.  The bird was a little bloody at the thigh joints.  No problem, I just dropped it back in after cracking those joints, for like 3 minutes.  But I was at the smaller end of the scale.  2.45#, remember?  When the recipe had called for a 2.5-3 pounder?  So if MINE was a little under, a bigger bird might have actually been dangerous to eat.

But beyond that, the stock SUCKED.  Insipid flavor and aroma, not much body.  It was what Nate would call 'chicken water,' when whatever yutz prep cook would cover the chicken bones by a foot, instead of an inch.  

The Bottom Line is This

I still like the book!  It's an enjoyable read, and I'm still going to try to cook a bunch of the recipes.  But now I know, if something looks wrong, to follow my instincts, and to warn any other readers at the outset.