2

I'm looking at ways of enhancing the production of my recipes, and a couple of quality control items have come up.

I've seen recipes where there's an ingredient that never gets used; and some where the instructions call for an ingredient that was never listed. There are also problems I've seen with bogus amounts (eg 7lb instead of 7oz) or amounts expressed in units that don't get used that way (eg 27 tsp of something or 1/32 cup of something).

Is anyone aware of any guidelines or software for recipe-writers to address things like this? I have seen a page at https://diannej.com/2010/7-more-most-common-recipe-writing-errors/ which identifies some editorial problems, but I'm looking at more concrete technical approaches.

rumtscho
  • 134,346
  • 44
  • 300
  • 545
Peter Flynn
  • 121
  • 1

1 Answers1

4

To enhance the quality of your recipes, you need to have someone proof read them and execute the recipe; the second part, you should be there and record everything the testers do or not with your recipe.

To pick up errors and typos in existing recipe, you just need to proof read the recipe and apply whatever experience you have to fix them (for example if a cake recipe seems off with 25 cups of sugar, maybe by looking at the other ingredients it is actually 2.5 cups.

Same kind of analysis for either missing or wrong ingredients; if a cake recipe lists lemon zests but is not in the recipe steps, you need to decide with your own experience one way or the other it it should be used or not.

Anecdotal, there was a TV show (usa or canadian) a while back where they tested recipes from recipe books just by "executing" the recipes literally (no adjustment, no "maybe if we changed that")

There were tons of typos in quantities or missing ingredients or even oven settings (for example recipe forgot to say to turn on the oven) that a novice cook would not see, but a seasoned cook would pick up and adjust automatically.

Max
  • 20,422
  • 1
  • 34
  • 52
  • 2
    Your first paragraph, is that something you have direct experience of, have heard of being done by food writers... We're not always big on backing things up on this Stack, but that seems like something which you should be clear if it is an established practice or your own idea. – Spagirl Dec 19 '19 at 11:12
  • Proofing and testing isn't the problem. Family and friends make excellent guinea-pigs :-) What I am doing is writing code to check ingredients against mentions in the method, and to check order of mention. I just wanted to know if anyone else has ever done this. – Peter Flynn Jan 04 '20 at 12:17