Publishing recipes is risky business – one typo and you’re in deep. We’ve known that, of course, but with our dual appreciation of seafood and Maine culinary traditions, we’ve printed a lot of recipes and other food-related material since our first issue more than a decade ago. Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, however, and last month the risks came home to roost. Through no fault of hers, Sandy Oliver’s well-meant and delicious-sounding recipe for hot water gingerbread appeared in print minus two critical ingredients – flour and baking powder – and lacking information about what to do with the hot water.
The results? Well, they fell into two categories. The unfortunate readers who tried the recipe as it appeared ended up with a pan full of inedible goo. At least one told us about that. And we ended up, as the letters we’ve printed here suggest, with that goo smeared all over our already red faces as we answered the phone, opened the mail or read our e-mail. (In our defense, we did correct the recipe immediately on the Working Waterfront website [see October WWF], and we provided it to anyone who wrote in.) We’ve had more mail on this topic than we ever had before on anything, globally significant or otherwise.
As we said, publishing recipes carries the risk of errors, particularly when the last people who see the paper before it’s printed are all male and amateur cooks at best.
Yes, we’ll be careful in the future. No, there’s no recipe in this issue – give us a month to clean up.
– ed.