Too many cooks' errors
Magazine sub SHEILA MILLER is exasperated at the sloppy writing in cookery columns and suggests how to correct it
MANY WRITERS for magazines have expertise other than writing, but there is no reason for their pieces not to be in good English. Cookery columns often seem to slip through without being properly looked at; they needn’t read like great literature, but they should at least make sense and the meaning must be clear.
Problems arise in recipes with the word “until”. Some writers don’t understand that a phrase such as “until cooked through” is added after the cooking time as insurance against the reader doing something wrong or the oven not working properly; it does not mean “by which time it will be cooked”. If you knew for certain that cooking would take the exact time, you wouldn’t need the phrase. Best is “bake for 25 minutes OR until ...”
“Beat well between each addition” is a common mistake: since “each” is singular, the preposition should be “after”, not “between”. The word “per” is singular too, meaning “for each (one)”, so you can’t have X calories per 2 biscuits.
For some reason recipes seem to attract tautologies, which are worth spotting to eliminate when you’re short of space. A common one is “mix together”. Another is “reduce the sauce down.” And “pour the cheese mixture over the top of the lasagne slices.” Where else would you pour it?
The habit of missing out pronouns can lead to misunderstanding, or even to unintended aquatics, as in “Drain and plunge into cold water”.
Cooks seem to have some sort of aversion to simply PUTTING anything anywhere: they have to “place” it or “pop” it. But “place” implies a degree of care that is usually not needed, and “pop” is just silly.
Sometimes they get their prepositions in the wrong place, which causes confusion. With “divide the yoghurt between two glasses and spoon over the compote,” readers may think they should spoon the yoghurt over the compote, when the opposite is intended. Well I suppose it would taste the same.
“Bubble” is an intransitive verb so cannot take an object: a stew can bubble, but you can’t bubble a stew. I’ve come across sentences such as “stir through the rice” instead of “stir in”; it left me wondering what it was that I was supposed to stir through the rice.
Resist the cook’s tendency to pluralise mass nouns. They tend to write about “foods”, “meats” or “fruits”, and I’ve seen even “milks” and “rices”. Personally, I hate the drive to make out that vegetables have babies — baby potatoes and so on. Why not just small ones?