Is there such thing as a badly written recipe in a cookbook?

[LiquoriceWheel]

This is a bit of a rant but I was wondering if anyone has come across a recipe that tasted horrible despite doing everything correctly. I've just made some lemon biscuits and they taste repulsive. The recipe was 'easy', used common ingredients and a normal biscuit making method.

Basically, cream together butter, sugar, zest of three lemons and slowly add a lightly beaten egg. Sift flour and mix until dough just formed. Put in cling film and chill in fridge. Roll out and cut out biscuits. Chill and bake in oven. You get the idea, pretty simple right?

So why do they taste horrible?! I carefully weighed each ingredient and was extremely careful 'zesting' the lemons. I'm confident I didn't do anything wrong so I'm blaming the recipe.

Argh, so annoyed - I've never met a biscuit I didn't like UNTIL NOW

3 lemons sounds like an awful lot!

Thanks sunseed. I checked the recipe and it definitely says to use 3 lemons. It did seem like a lot of zest at the time.

My first thought was that 3 lemons was way too much.

Which cookbook is it from? I know some of the Nigella books contain minor errors because there are corrections on her website.

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Peggy Porschen citrus cookies. Sorry Peggy! Her books are beautiful though

Yes! I have seen recipes where they list ingredients but don't tell you when they go in. You have to guess. There are some very lax editors/publishing houses out there!

Clearsommespace that's really bad!

Might the lemons have been waxed? I never really like lemon zest in stuff to be honest, it never seems to taste quite right.

I was ready to rip Paul Hollywood's smug head off when I used his recipe for crumpets in his Bake book (it was a present). I tried them about 4 times before flouncing off in a sulk. When he did the TV version I sat there with my book open and a pen ready to annotate the recipe - gave up in the end because he used a totally different version.

Have you used the pith of the lemons rather than just the zest?

Also the number of recipes where it says 'fry theonions for two minutes until soft then add... '
The onions I buy are never softened after 2 minutes!!

Oh god yeah - early Nigella books were the worst for this. I also quite often come across the same thing as Highly where unless you read it from top to bottom first you end up separating procedures that don't need to be separated.

All recipes are supposed to be tested in bookes, but testing costs money...

I wondered about the lemons being waxed as well as that would make them taste unpleasant. When you say they were horrible was it the flavour itself? Can you describe? Could the flour have been stale?

Keith Floyd's cookbooks were awful! Take some milk -how much milk? Then add eggs - again how many of the darn things? So very unspecific including "line a pie tin with pastry". How big??? What kind of pastry? And concluding with "bake in a hot oven".... very exasperating.

Could the flour have been stale?

I wondered this; I've made bad cakes etc before and it's been using old flour wot done it.

The flour was fresh but I don't know whether the lemon had wax on them. I ran them under the tap for a bit. The biscuits tasted very bitter and too lemony to be tasty. I was expecting a nice airy 'zing' flavour but got the opposite. I used real lemons but the biscuits tasted sort of artificial?

You could look for some similar recipes to compare the amount of lemon called for.

Yes! I tried to make some courgette muffins from a book aimed at cooking for children. No mention of courgettes in the ingredients nor recipe!

I think you need boiling water to remove wax from lemons. Still I would be surprised if wax is the problem.

Zest from three lemons sounds far too much. One would be more usual.

There are some very well known receipe book error. I think nigella was renowned for them at one point.

The most infamous recipe book errors has to be Robert Carrier's 'two tablespoons of chilli powder'. It didn't specify that he meant Mexican blended chilli powder, so, back in the seventies, an awful lot of people used two tablespoons of powdered chillies!! Feeling hot hot hot

Yes I've come across the odd recipe which just doesn't work. There is a hairy bikers one for crumble where the ratio of fat to flour is clearly completely wrong and results in a revolting sticky mess instead of crumble!

Yes, I find it happens fairly frequently and it has led to the invention of my day dream to become a recipe tester who re-writes recipes in a sensible format. Anyone want to pay me lots of ££ to do it?!

OMG Missy, is that the 'Mum's know best' one? I've made that and it was so gloopy and horrid!

Mums Know Best. I do know about apostrophes!