Forum

Don't you sometimes get those things that are really annoying about cookbooks? 

One of them is when cookbooks tell you to only make small amounts "because a little goes a long way" - and then give recipes for half a litre of flavored oil / ten preserved lemons / half a cup of spice mix / etc.

Another is translation errors. I got a Dutch translation of Charmaine Solomon's Complete Asian Cookbook - and they translate ground chiles as "piment", which means allspice in Dutch. Arggh.

Any other pet peeves?

The poorly proof-read recipe is the issue that I find most annoying.  Especially the ones that call for an ingredient but don't tell you what to do with it in the instructions.  I find myself reading and rereading the instructions in the middle of cooking a recipe and thinking, "I know they must tell you to add it somewhere and sometime!" but no they don't.  So I then end up just throwing it in where I think it makes sense based on my own cooking experience.

Thankfully I don't see it often, but it annoys me if a recipe calls for an ingredient that is used in two different parts of the recipe and they don't specify in the ingredient list that the amount is divided. And I second how annoying it is for an ingredient to be called for and then is not mentioned in the recipe instructions!

I've found the opposite problem from hillsboroks. Sometimes I find an ingredient in the instructions that isn't in the ingredient list.

So it's "add the lemon juice" - how much?

Or "put the chicken in a pan" - how much? Which parts? Bone-in or boneless? Cut or not?

Or the recipe tells you to use a pan, but not which size or kind.

Bittrette- I absolutely agree with your pan size comment.  Having prepped the recipe, the instruction to now "use an appropriately sized pan" is extremely annoying.

I suppose you have to have all your pans out (or at least know where all of them are) and then see which pan all that stuff will fill.

I had the opposite problem with 'Steamed Indian corn pudding'. A dish size was specified but I needed two of those to hold all the batter. It would have been a disaster if I had blithely kept pouring...