Twenty years of perfecting recipes. That’s how long America’s Test Kitchen has cooked, baked and obsessed over the results. Based in Brookline, MA, it’s the test kitchen for a PBS television show of the same name, where the staffs of Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country magazines work out their recipes.

How does the staff create a recipe that works every time? I asked John “Doc” Willoughby, the company’s executive editor for magazines. The Harvard grad began his career at Cook’s Illustrated when Chris Kimball founded the magazine in 1993. In 2001, he left to become executive editor at Gourmet magazine, then returned to America’s Test Kitchen in 2010. Willoughby, who writes cookbooks with co-author Chris Schlesinger, a chef, has written nine, including the award-winning The Thrill of the Grill.

Lori Galvin, executive editor of America’s Test Kitchen and a reader of this blog, sent me the company’s latest cookbook,  Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook: 2,000 Recipes of 20 Years of America’s Most Trusted Food Magazine, and suggested I talk with Willoughby about the company’s process of developing and testing recipes:

Q. What do you do as executive editor of America’s Test Kitchen?

A. I’m in charge of the two magazines plus 24 special issues for newsstands. I follow along the process for each magazine, starting with ideas like, “Do readers want another roast beef recipe? If so, which kind?” Then we survey readers before doing an article.

Q. How much do you rely on readers for your content?

A. Once we decide what we want to do, we come up with a recipe and send it to readers to test. Eighty percent of those who make it have to want to make it again. Sometimes we end up never publishing the recipe because it’s too complicated or some other reason. Then we do a post publication survey where readers tell us which recipes they like the best and why.

Q. Does the test kitchen staff start with a pre-existing recipe? 

A. We use a spectrum of sources. We try to find the early version of a traditional recipe, and we look in major and specialty cookbooks. We look for different approaches. The same approach to apple pie is not helpful.

Q. Then what happens?

A. The standard way to test is to take as many as five different approaches. We make those recipes and the test kitchen staff tastes and rates them, and then gives feedback for each. The cook discusses what she learned from that process and which approaches she liked. She might decide to put three approaches together in one recipe. Then she follows whatever tangents come up. The reason it takes so long is that you have to test one variable at a time.

Q. What are these variables? I read that the average America’s Test Kitchen recipe is prepared an average of 65 times, over a period of six weeks. 

A. For a gingerbread cake, you’ll test it at a range of different oven temperatures, with the rack at different levels. The amount of leavener might vary, and then there’s the liquid you might use – water, milk, orange juice, and different kinds of beers. Someone will ask if lager is better so you have to try different beers.

For roast beef, if the goal is super-evenly cooked juicy meat, it’s a different kind of testing. You get into a lot of science, like if you cook it to X degrees and let it sit, then put it back in the oven. Once you get started down that road, there might be 40 tests to do to get those variables right.

One of my favorite discoveries is where we microwave the bananas for the banana bread recipe. It’s a little absurd but it works. The problem is that you want the banana flavor without the banana mushiness. When a discovery like that happens, it’s exciting.

Q. Let’s say you find a technique from someone else and you use it. Do you credit that person’s recipe?

A. You try to. I was making dulce de lece, and I noticed that when people use baking soda, it worked better. It helped the browning and it had a more butterscotch-y flavor. I found a lot of recipes that used the baking soda, but if I had found that only Rick Bayless used it, then I would say so. I saw that he used cinnamon, which I hadn’t seen before, so if I use it I will credit him.

In the gingerbread recipe, the tester used a technique from a colonial recipe, so she said so. She had visited Plimouth Plantation. That also made it a better story.

Q. How did the gingerbread work out?

A. I thought the development process was crazy, just insane. But sometimes the center of the cake sank. The tester was not satisfied and testing went on for weeks. Had it been up to me, at week three, I might have said, “That’s good enough.” But the test cooks get obsessive, which is a good thing.

I made the gingerbread this weekend, for a dinner party. When I poured the batter into the pan I thought it wouldn’t work. The batter was like water. But the tester had solved the problem. (DJ: Here’s why, according to the headnote: “Incorporating the baking soda with the wet ingredients instead of the other dry ones helped to neutralize those acidic ingredients before they get incorporated into the batter and allow the baking powder to do a better job.”)

Q. I have more questions about the testing. You said the editors might taste five versions of a dish and decide what they want. Why have a goal versus the serendipity of creating a great new dish?

A. For the cook, if you leave it wide open, they could do their favorite chocolate chip cookie, and that would be it. But it helps to have a more defined goal. We say we want this kind of cookie, so go make it. It’s a group process so we have to agree at the beginning.

Q. That wasn’t how you did it at Gourmet.

A. A lot of Gourmet was done in menus, where you would have an individual cook who would create all the recipes. There was a lot of tasting as well, but it was more about “Is it good?”

Q. How much of this rigorous process is applicable to people who come up with their own recipes?

A. We have 42 cooks and we can do this. But some of it is applicable. If you’re not satisfied with your dish, the process of looking at all the recipes you can find and asking how do they do it differently and what you could do differently will take care of it.

I did an eggplant recipe for the New York Times and I made it 10 times because I couldn’t get it right. I thought three tests were enough but they weren’t. If you decide “I like this” after two tests, you don’t need to go any further. I hate salting and draining eggplant, and I kept thinking I could get away from it, but I was wrong.

I’d say that if you think of something and it seems silly, try it anyway, like microwaving bananas.

Q. How does this rigorous process of developing and testing influence you as a cookbook author?

A. I write recipes with chef Chris Schlesinger, and most of the recipes come from him. So if I make lamb kebab with Middle Eastern flavors and we both really like it, that’s that. We use recipe testers. We’re just starting a cookbook now, on grilling.

Q. It seems that a lot of your magazine recipes are about teaching technique to readers. There are sidebars that say things like “To keep baked chicken breasts juicy, poke the meat with a fork and salt each piece.” Is your job to help readers understand why a certain step or ingredient is important? 

A. Yes. One reason is global and one is more practical. I think people can learn how to make a recipe work better. Two, if you don’t explain why, people won’t do it. Many people don’t actually follow a recipe.

Q. Doesn’t it make the recipe longer, to explain why?

A. Hopefully people read the stories. We put the critical information in the headnotes. We also use a sidebar to explain why the science works and why you should do it.

Q. Cook’s Illustrated puts its recipes behind a pay wall, for $34.95 per year. Why did you decide not to give away recipes, like other magazines do?

A. Because it’s a different business model than other magazines. Traditionally, magazines sell advertising space on their websites. We don’t have advertisers, and the only thing we can make money on is our product, and we can’t give it away. We do have a free website, but it’s not a recipe repository.

Q. How many paid subscriptions do you have?

A. The three company sites have a combined paid circulation of 450,000.

Q. What do you think about food bloggers who give away their recipes for free?

A. Well, they’re not going to make a lot of money! Blogs have their plusses and minuses. You can put work up without a company behind you, put up your own stuff. But not that many people have made money.

 Q. Do you read any food blogs?

A. I read Smitten Kitchen, but I don’t read a whole lot regularly. I’ve found that if you follow people on Twitter, other people point out interesting things and then I go read them.

Q. Do you think there’s such a thing as an original recipe?

A. I do. I don’t think there are a million of them. But some people can come up with a combination of flavor and ingredients that no one has seen before, if you search for it and you don’t find it.

Jean-Georges Vongerichten thinks about food in a different way. Maybe the recipes have been made before at some time in history, but it’s the first time you’ve seen it, and it’s not from a culinary tradition but out of his head. Grant Achatz probably has tons of original recipes.

Q. Is it chefs, then, who are more likely to come up with something new?

A. No, cookbook authors can do the same thing. But they’re probably going to get less attention.

Q. Does Cook’s Illustrated go after people who use the recipes as their own?

A. We have gone after people who use 15 or 20 of our recipes on their websites, because then they’re starting to take something we can no longer sell because they are available for free.

Q. What is your advice for someone who wants to be paid to develop recipes?

A. Contact cookbook editors to be recipe testers. My guess is it’s easier to break into.

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Food Network fired star Anne Thornton for adapting recipes a little too closely. (Photo: Food Network)

Yes, one of my favorite subjects was in the news again recently: the perils of adapting recipes. Here are two recent developments that affected a cooking show host and a food blogger:

1. Show cancelled because of adapting recipes. The Food Network cancelled the show of TV Chef Anne Thornton because she adapted recipes based on making small tweaks to the recipes of others, apparently.

Media outlets went crazy when the news hit that her show, Dessert First, was not renewed because many of her recipes were “plagiarized” from Martha Stewart and Ina Garten, specifically a German chocolate frosting and lemon bars.

“You take what you learn from them and then you riff on that,”she said in her defense in a story in the UK Daily Mail. “As for lemon squares, there’s only so many ways you can make them, so of course there will be similarities.”

Her comment sounds similar to those I’ve received on this blog. And I don’t necessarily disagree with her, in principle. There really are only so many lemon bar recipes, and is it your job to find the original one? Here’s what I’d say to her: “If you have nothing new to offer about a lemon bar, move on.”

What’s great about the Daily Mail story is that you can see a side-by-side comparison of her frosting recipe and Stewart’s. Scroll down to the end of the article and read the recipes. Clearly, Thornton made a few minor edits. It’s one thing to be inspired from someone else’s recipe and write your own, and another to just tweak a few words and amounts.

That rule you’ve heard, about changing three things in a recipe to make it yours? It didn’t work for her.

I asked on Twitter and Facebook what people thought about Thornton’s recipe writing skills. Here are some of the replies:

Food blogger Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen asked, “Why is it plagiarizing Martha or Ina, not the other 10K people who have published riffs on these?”

Cookbook author Nancie McDermott said (in a series of tweets) the report’s tone was sensational. “It presumes we can & should come up w/Unique NeverB4Seen Creations. Stealing = bad&wrong. But…who created lemon bars? Where? What time? If I could come up with something “new,” why couldn’t another 1 come up with same thing on own?” This stinks of ‘faux-righteous’ outrage. Seldom can we track ’1st Ever!’ And why bother?”

Food blogger and cookbook author Beth Sheresh of Kitchen Mage tweeted, “Nothing is new. Created a recipe from nothing but my head. Found THREE different recipes that were exactly same thing.”

On My Will Write for Food Facebook page, food blogger Amanda McInerny of Lamb’s Ears and Honey wrote, “I just wonder if there isn’t another agenda here. It is a rare and remarkable cook who can come up with a recipe which doesn’t reference some other dish, somewhere in the universe. With the popularity of food books, mags, tv, blogs etc I can’t see this issue going away or being resolved any time soon. …not at all sure that rare and remarkable is what tv execs look for in anything. I suspect they are after looks and marketability to attract the advertisers – it would be nice to think I’m wrong, though.”

2. Food blogger harassed for adapting recipes. Lest you think that people only notice when televisions hosts adapt recipes, Australian Food Blogger Amanda McInerney (whose comment you read above) posted an adapted recipe by UK cookbook author Dan Lepard on her blog. She left the ingredients list the same, but wrote her own headnote and method. Lepard’s business manager, David Whitehouse, came after her in the comments of her blog post and requested she take her adaptation down. She refused. Read the blog’s comments to see what ensued. Two intellectual property lawyers came to her defense! Whitehouse’s argument is that her work was derivative, and therefore subject to copyright law.

I dug around and found three other brownie and sweet potato recipes:

• On The Kitchn, the writer linked to the original Leopard recipe and listed only the ingredients, converting them for an American audience. I like that, even though readers have to print his recipe and The Kitchn’s.
• The blogger of PaleOMG changed the ingredients to include honey, coconut oil and coconut flour and didn’t mention his recipe — if indeed she got it from him.
• Most fascinating was a brownie and sweet potato recipe from Body-Soul from April 2009, more than two years before Dan Lepard published his recipe in the UK Guardian. So whose recipe was it in the first place?

What is the message in these events? Adapt recipes at your own risk? Or should we all just get over it, because everyone does it, and recipes can’t be copyrighted anyway?

You might also like:

• Adjusting a Recipe Doesn’t Make it Yours
• Should Bloggers Be Praised for Recipes They Didn’t Write?
• Whole Lot of Lifting Going On
• Recipe Attribution

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I do a lot of recipe editing in Microsoft Word, both for individuals and publishers. The number one mistake I find is when ingredients are listed out of order, compared to how they’re used in the method.

Before I learned this tip, I drove myself nuts scrolling up and down in Word to check: Did she put the olive oil first? Scroll up, then scroll down. Does the garlic come before or after the Herbs de Provence? Scroll down, then scroll up.

The "Split" feature in MS-Word lets you see two parts of the same file.

Now I use Word’s Split feature so I can see both the ingredients list and the method on my screen. That way I can check the order of ingredients without scrolling like a maniac.

Here’s all you have to do:

1. Open an MS-Word file that has a recipe in it.

2. Under Window in the Toolbar, select Split. You’ll see two parts of one file on your screen. Each section scrolls independently.

3. Position your recipe’s list of ingredients in the top half of the file and the method in the bottom. Voila! Both are visible. Now check that you’ve listed the ingredients in the order you use them, of course.

Got any other tips you’d like to share about recipe editing or using MS-Word? I’d love to read them.

You might also like:

• 7 Most Common Recipe Writing Errors
• 7 More Most Common Recipe Writing Errors
• The Top 10 Terms to Avoid in Recipes
• What’s the Right Length for a Recipe?

* * *

One little announcement:

If you live in the New York area and are thinking of writing a cookbook, join me and three other cookbook industry professionals at our one-day class, Creating and Selling Your Dream Cookbook, on March 27, 2012.

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In preparation for a recent recipe writing panel for the International Food Blogger Conference, I decided I wanted to know more about career recipe developers and how they work.

So I spoke and emailed with professional recipe developers who work for retail food manufacturers, growers, commodity boards, and commissions such as the California Walnut Commission. My goal was to get more information about corporate recipe writing, and also to understand what kinds of opportunities exist for food writers.

Here’s the first thing I learned: The culinary experts who get these jobs are not necessarily food writers or cookbook authors. These professionals might have backgrounds in nutrition, or they’re dieticians, or they have a degree in home economics or food science. While they may not have been to culinary school, they are skilled cooks who can write recipes using a variety of techniques and styles. They also might be members of IACP’s Test Kitchen Professionals Special Section.

When coming up with ideas, these recipe developers study food trends and know what kind of ingredients are current and which have staying power. They know what level of sophistication clients want, depending on their target audience, and they consider variables such as pan size and substitutions.

Recipe developers might work with chefs to rewrite recipes that work in a home cook’s kitchen. Some have clients who want recipes that conform to dietary specifications or require nutritional analysis. Sometimes their clients ask for product concepts first, which means writing out ideas for recipes, such as five variations on a turkey sandwich. Oh, and don’t even bother with a pannini or a sandwich with pesto or cranberries — they already have those in their files, thanks.

Once clients select the recipes they like, the finished recipes could appear in several places, including:

• In a magazine ad
• On product packaging
• On a company’s website, or
• In a press release directed to newspaper and magazine editors who use free content.

Recipe developers charge between $300 and $600 per recipe, depending on experience or on complexity of the recipes. Reimbursement for groceries is always separate. Typically, the recipes will belong to the company, not to the writer. And one last thing – the client might have a test kitchen, so the recipe better work flawlessly, be well written, conform to food safety standards, and taste great.

I’m looking forward to learning more by talking with my fellow panelists at this weekend’s IFBC conference in Santa Monica. I’ll be on a recipe development panel with Amelia Saltsman, author and publisher of The Santa Monica Farmer’s Market Cookbook; and Martha Homberg, former editor of Fine Cooking magazine. Hope to see you there!

(A version of this post first appeared in my quarterly newsletter about food writing. My newsletter contains tips and links to helpful articles and resources. If you’d like to receive it, sign up here.)

(Photo courtesy Simon Howden, Free Digital Photos.)

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Jenny McGruther quit her job as an office manager last year to devote herself to her online cooking business, Nourished Kitchen. (Photo by Kevin McGruther)

Do you dream of making enough money from food writing online to quit your day job? Do you want more income as a self-employed writer and educator?

Jennifer McGruther started down a path to lucrative self-employment in 2006, when she switched to a traditional foods diet. She defines this style of eating as “the foods that your ancestors ate prior to the industrial revolution in the 19^th Century and the green revolution in the mid-20^th Century.” The focus is on raw dairy, cultured and fermented foods, broth, offal, and grains and beans that have been soaked, fermented or sprouted. Protein sources must be grass fed, pastured or wild-caught.

She had trouble finding enough information about traditional foods (Sally Fallon’s Weston A. Price Foundation and her book, Nourishing Traditions, are pioneers). So in 2007, McGruther started a blog as a way to track the recipes she developed.

Based on the amount of interest in her blog and her newsletter (begun in 2009), she launched an online business of teaching people to cook traditional foods. She charges by the month and by the class for her online cooking classes and healthy meal plans. Hundreds of people sign up. Last year, she quit her day job as a Colorado office manager to work full time at her business, Nourished Kitchen.

Today, her newsletter has more than 21,000 subscribers. (Her Facebook fan page has more than 22,000 Likes.) Now she has a full website that sells two kinds of products: meal plans and recipes ($10 per month/ $85 per year) and video cooking classes ($149 for 13 installments), all aimed at an audience interested in pursuing the traditional foods diet.

We spoke recently about how her online business evolved and how it works:

Q. What’s interesting is that your readers are willing to pay for recipes, even though the web — and your blog — offer so many recipes for free.

A. When you develop a relationship with your readers, they are wiling to pay something more. I have solid, well-tested recipes that can be reproduced easily, and people value that.

When I decided to branch into premium content, I had about 2000 newsletter subscribers, and about 80 ended up making purchases. Their feedback was excellent and it gave me the confidence to continue providing premium content in addition to the free content offered on the site.

Q. That’s a good number, as a start. What came next?

A. In February, 2010 I launched free daily emails based on giving up processed food for a month. I increased my newsletter subscriptions by 1500 subscribers and was featured on CNN. That taught me people were interested in getting more involved. They kept emailing me with questions. I realized they didn’t know how to cook unprocessed food.

The daily emails were my pilot program for unveiling cooking classes. I worked with several other bloggers to create online cooking classes. We work together to cross-promote each other’s premium content, which helps us all to reach a broader audience. We also share suggestions, tips and technical advice with one another.

In May 2010, I launched a 12-week video cooking class on preparing traditional foods. There were 24 videos on things like how to truss a chicken, make sauerkraut, and make kombucha. My husband and I shot the videos together.

The new cooking classes are on making cultured and fermented foods. For $149, each class offers between eight and 13 installments, and each installment covers a particular topic, with 3 to 6 videos, print materials, and recipes, which usually amount to about 20 pages of content.

(To see an example of a video, watch this one on How to Ferment Anything.)

Q. How many people will buy these cooking class series?

A. Typically, each cooking class sells to several hundred people.

Q. How did the first one go?

A. There were lots of learning curves. I offered lifetime access to the site. People kept coming back and asking for help, asking if I was offering more classes. They were struggling with time management and kitchen management issues, such as remembering to soak oatmeal for breakfast 12 hours in advance.

Strawberry, rhubarb, eggs and homemade cream. (Photos by Jenny McGruther.)

That’s what led to the meal plan program. I also felt I needed a range of price points, so I allowed people to subscribe to the program for only $10 per month.I found that people couldn’t commit to traditional food seven days a week, so I gave them plans for three days a week.

(For the meal plan program, customers receive three full dinner menus each week: For each menu, there’s one dessert, one ferment recipe, one soup, a to do-list, a shopping list, cooking tips, and make-ahead lists. There’s one slow-cooker meal. See this sample of a meal plan.)

I’ve found that some people stick with the program for six months, and then they have enough recipes. Others make every single recipe every single week. And some use it to access new recipes.

Q. How many subscribers do you have for your meal plan?

A. Several hundred per month.

Q. I can see why. I’m amazed by the amount of information you provide, not just recipes but a lot of handholding and explaining so people can understand exactly what they’re getting. How did you know to create all that material?

A. I determined what I would like to see before I purchase something. With a physical product, you can see it. With digital information, it’s a little more challenging. I did my best to make sure it was very clear to see exactly what people were getting. That helps me create informed buyers who are not confused about the product.

Q. Why do you think your programs are successful?

A. They provide info on what people need, and they know exactly what they’re getting. The price points are effective, between $50 and $200, and work for most people. Plus, I was fortunate to be one of the first people to tap into this particular niche, so my site is more prominent. People get that one-on-one information and attention from a trusted source, and that’s enormously valuable. Also, I’m accessible. If a subscriber called me about cookware recommendations, I am happy to provide one-on-one information.

Q. What is challenging about this new business for you?

A. I get hundreds of emails and it’s really challenging for me to go through all of them. And when I go through them, that’s time I don’t spend developing new recipes for my blog and time I don’t spend with my family. It’s exhausting! I got an assistant for customer service, but an assistant can’t help with specialized expertise. I try to answer emails in two business days. Now I’m looking into an assistant who has specialized knowledge in traditional foods.

When I do a launch, I’m working an 80-hour week. I launch the cooking classes about three times each year with large promotions, though they’re open for enrollment at any time. I haven’t done a large promotion or launch for the meal plans yet, but I promote them periodically by social media or in blog posts.

Q. So what are the lessons for people who are still trying to figure out how to make a living from food writing?

A. They need to build a devoted audience based on their specialized knowledge. Once they have a way to convey that knowledge to their readers, they need to make it very clear about what the product will do for their readers. If they outline it directly and hit a price point that provides substantial value, they’ll be in a good position.

(Disclosure: I met McGruther when she contacted me about working together, and she is a client.)

You might also like:

Selling Recipes Online for $2.49 Each

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Prolific food writer Melissa Clark writes cookbooks, freelance articles and columns, and a blog.

If you looked up the opposite of “slacker,” you’d see Melissa Clark‘s name highlighted in bold.

The prolific freelancer writes weekly recipes for the New York Times and Gilt Taste, among other freelance gigs. She has also written 32 cookbooks. Many are collaborations with chefs including Daniel Boulud, David Bouley, and White House Pastry Chef Bill Yosses. Her latest cookbook, out in October, is Cook This Now: 120 Easy and Delectable Dishes You Can’t Wait to Make.

Oh, and in her copious spare time, she takes care of her young daughter and writes a blog.

In an interview, she spoke about her career as a food writer, including advice for those who want to be as successful:

Q. You’d been working as a cook and a caterer in New York. What made you want to become a food writer?

A. I always wanted to be a food writer. I started a catering business when I was in grad school. Food was in everything I wrote. It was my metaphor. This was the 1990s. People knew of restaurant critics and cookbooks writers, but food writing wasn’t a viable career. I felt like I was on an uncharted path.

Q. Is a Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) in writing a good way to learn about freelance writing and cookbook collaboration? Would you recommend it?

A. No. It’s a good way to find your voice as a writer. People don’t think about that. It’s just as important.

Q. As a freelancer, don’t you have to write the voice of the publication?

A. If you don’t even know who you are and what your voice is, it’s really hard to figure out how to make your voice fit into other molds. Voice has to have a point of view, the perspective that the piece is coming from.

It’s really good to know how to write in different perspectives (first person, second person, third person). You learn all different perspectives when you get an MFA.

I recommend that people take writing classes. It helps stretch you as a writer. It’s really good to challenge yourself.

Q. What was your first big break as a freelance writer?

A. I wrote for websites about food, including once a month for Hearst magazines. I wrote tons of content for Cuisinenet. They paid me real money. I could support myself if I catered on the side.

I also developed recipes for IMP, which put out recipe cards that went out in the mail, where they asked people to subscribe to a recipe club. They had bought (food) photos from Sweden, and they would give me a recipe in Swedish. I made a lot of coffeecakes and French pancakes.

If I were doing it today, I would start out blogging, because that is the path. The path (I described) is gone.

Q. Regarding collaborating on cookbooks, how difficult is it to convince great chefs to let you redo their recipes for home cooks?

A. Depends on the chef and their ego level. Some cling very tightly and want their food to be made exactly the way they make it. Other chefs are wiling to let go of it. I want to work with chefs who let me work with the recipe.

Q. How did you get your regular freelance column for the New York Times, “A Good Appetite?”

A. I started writing for the Times in 1998, doing general assignment reporting.

They came to me with a column in 2007. They wanted people to see into the mind of a confident cook who finds her way, how you get from point A to dinner. They said, “Let’s try it for 10 weeks.”

Q. What’s your the best advice for someone who want to freelance?

1. Work really hard on your writing
2. Write in different voices
3. Make deadlines, have clean well-edited copy, be nice, be accommodating. Get back to them right away. That’s just as important as being a great writer
4. Take (writing and cooking) classes
5. Don’t think that people should come to you because you have a blog
6. Intern, stage, and make yourself much more valuable
7. Don’t say no. Just say yes and make it work.

Q, What would you tell someone who wants to write a cookbook?

A. It’s hard to sell a cookbook without a platform. Really work on that. (If you’re a blogger), editors care about how many readers you have and how many people comment. You have to build it.

The idea doesn’t have to be original. Everything is put through the lens of you. Really focus on your voice and market that.

I’m still learning. Every time I do a cookbook I have a new tutor.

Q. What’s the hardest thing about developing recipes?

Tips -- like why to grate a tomato -- and recipes appear on Clark's blog (Photo by Melissa Clark).

A. I’m always humbled by what I don’t know. I try to learn when there’s something that doesn’t work and I don’t know why, especially with baking. I don’t take anything for granted.

Sometimes I make something and it doesn’t blow me away. How do I make it better? It’s always a fun challenge. But it can also be humbling when it doesn’t work.

I have a little trick that I always use. I retitle the recipe. So, if I burn the pasta in a pasta dish, I call it “browned garlic pasta. “

Q. How important is it to have a background as a professional cook, to become a food writer?

A. No one’s going to read you if you’re not an authority. You need to know more than the person next to you because you’re going to teach them. It’s all about improving your skills and your knowledge.

Q. What would you like to tell someone who wants to be successful?

A. The old Einstein quote: It’s 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration. I work really hard. Also, don’t be so brittle. Criticism is good. It helps you. It makes you grow.

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Goldman's Notting Hill Brownies. (Photo by Ryan Szulc.)

Eight years ago, Marcy Goldman stopped giving recipes away for free on her website, Better Baking.

“Everyone was vacuuming up my recipes and putting them on sites like Allrecipes.com, sometimes changing the headnotes, sometimes not,” she told me in an interview. “It was irksome.“

“Cookbook editors were asking if the recipes for forthcoming books would be original or could they expect to see them on other people’s websites. Plus I felt like my recipes were my children. I felt proprietary about them, both as a chef and a writer.”

So she put her recipes behind a wall, and charged for them. Readers can subscribe to the website “magazine” for 1 to 4 months, for $5 to $20, to access more than 2500 recipes. Or they can buy one recipe at a time from the recipe archive.

I spoke with Goldman, a four-time cookbook author and longtime freelancer (The New York Times, the Washington Post, Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Cooking Light, Eating Well, and the Los Angeles Times Syndicate) about the philosophy behind her online recipe business and recipe writing:

Q. Tell me about your decision to start a website that you call a magazine, where people pay you to access recipes. As you know, this is not the usual model.

A. There’s different realities. I just keep doing what I’m doing and I’m still afloat.

When I first started (charging for recipes) there were few blogs, but people thought recipes should be free online. Then came food blogs and glut of free recipes from sites like Epcurious.com. I used to get hate mail that said, “How dare you charge?”

Q. I read that you have 20,000 subscribers and 1 million visitors per month. Is this true? Let’s see, 20,000 subscribers who pay $5 = $100,000. You’ve made that much from the site?

A. No. I have 18,000 people who read my free newsletter. A tiny percent are subscribers. I get 40,000 visitors per month to the website.

Q. How’s that working for you financially?

A. (Laughs.) Enough to fill up my car with gas once a month.

Q. Why do you do it, then?

A. I never thought of charging for recipes as a moneymaker. I do it more to protect my life’s work.

Those who paid for recipes in the beginning stopped because you can get everything free on the Internet. I think it’s helped me with book sales, though. And I can see what people are choosing. They babble about low-fat, vegan, gluten-free, but they’re downloading the double chocolate torte. Ten to one they go after the decadent recipes.

Q. No offence, but why should someone buy your recipe for Belgian Waffles when they can find free Belgian waffles recipes online by the dozens?

A. Do you know how many Belgian recipes I tested — all those eggs, all that butter — to get the definitive recipe?

There’s a huge scope in my recipe archive, and the headnotes are indicative. It’s not just Banana Bread Version 1, 2, and 3. My headnotes are extensive. Companies have approached me to just buy the headnotes!

(For an example of a voracious Goldman headnote, see this one for Caramel Cake.- DJ)

Goldman calls this "My Trademark, Most Requested, Absolutely Magnificent Caramel Matzoh Crunch." (Photo by Ryan Szulc.)

Q. How many free recipes appear on your site? I found a few on your blog, and I see four of your best recipes on your site.

A. I give out 2 to 5 recipes once a month. I Twitter a new recipe once a week. That’s kind of generous. On September 1, 2300 people downloaded my free Caramel Cake recipe.

Giving away recipes doesn’t bring you anything. I do it because it’s a tough economy, and I want to develop a following.

Statistically, Rachel Ray and Martha Stewart have the most free recipes online and the highest cookbook sales. They’re also A-list celebrities, so the machine that drives your awarness of them drvies sales.

I don’t think offering more free recipes would make me more popular. I’m a writer who happened to become a wonderful pastry chef, versus a pastry chef who can write a little bit. As a writer I always know there’s higher ground to go to.

Q. What do you say to food bloggers who give away free recipes, week after week, and want a book deal?

A. I think they have a higher chance when buying a lotto ticket. Do it anyway, but in conjunction with maybe apprenticing at a restaurant, doing a food show on a local radio station, selling cupcakes to your local coffeehouse. All roads lead to Rome.

I’ve done the math. The bigger reward has come from writing a proposal and a cookbook, or writing recipes for corporate customers.

The whole point is bringing my expertise and teaching people. Maybe I’m a bit of an elitist. I listen to Jaques Pepin, because the guy knows his stuff. Plus, I’m in my early 50s,and bloggers are at a different level of discovery because of their age.

I feel irritated by food bloggers because they adapt other people’s recipes. It would be demeaning to me to take someone else’s recipe. What if it took 5 to 10 years of distillation to produce that one amazing recipe, just for some blogger to dismantle it?

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Strawberry Rhubarb Smoothie. Photo courtesy of Jennifer Strohmeyer of Virtually Vegan Mama.

What do you do when another blogger copies your recipes, ideas, and even gets the same freelance gig? That’s the situation food blogger Jennifer Strohmeyer of Virtually Vegan Mama found herself in recently, when another blogger took Strohmeyer’s recipe ideas for her own blog, and even got the same freelancing gig at the same website where Strohmeyer contributes.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. We’ve had lots of discussions here about adapting recipes. Everyone modifies everyone else’s recipes, it seems. Maybe Strohmeyer was imagining things?

I think not. Let me tell you what happened.

But first, a little background on Strohmeyer. She started her blog in mid-January (full discloser: Strohmeyer is a former client), sending photos to Food Buzz and other photo sites to drive traffic. She got higher visibility all right, when another blogger noticed Strohmeyer’s site. These four coincidences happened, one more infuriating than the next:

Qinoa Date Nut Truffles. Photo courtesy of Jennifer Strohmeyer of Virtually Vegan Mama.

1. The case of the similar truffles

In March, Strohmeyer wrote a post on quinoa date truffles. She sent her photo to Food Buzz, where it appeared. Shortly, a photo of similar truffles with a different offbeat ingredient appeared on Food Buzz. “She pretty much ripped off my content and made it into the Top 9, “ Strohmeyer recalls.

At my suggestion, Strohmeyer left a comment on the blogger’s truffle post, saying something polite about how fun it was that she had used a similar unusual ingredient (I’m not linking to her blog because I don’t want you all to go postal on her). The point was to make the blogger aware that Strohmeyer knew about the similar recipe. The comment appeared, but then the other blogger removed it.

2. The case of the similar pie crust

Soon after, Strohmeyer blogged about a no-bake date almond pie crust. She wrote that she wanted to make tarts, but she didn’t have tartlet pans. A week later, the other blogger wrote a post about tartlets with a similar crust, but made with a different nut. Her photo made the Top 9 in Food Buzz again.

“She was obviously reading my blog and getting inspiration from it,” said Strohmeyer. “Ethically she should have acknowledged my recipe.”

3. The case of the mentioned pasta dish

Two months later, Strohmeyer wrote in the comments of her pasta post, “I’m making Penna Alla Vodka next…yum!”

Guess what happened? Yep. The other blogger made that same sauce, using a different title, and posted it on her blog. “This one was kind of an F U,” said Strohmeyer. “Was it a coincidence? I don’t think so. I’m not crazy.”

“I thought, ‘How dare you? You took my next post. ‘I didn’t do the next post on that subject.”

4. The case of the same freelance gig

Strohmeyer landed a gig where her blog posts appear on a website that attracts vegans. She added that info to her bio. Soon, the other blogger’s vegan recipe posts began appearing on the site as well.

Was it a coincidence? No. Strohmeyer figures the blogger read her bio and pitched the site.

So what’s a blogger to do? Should she contact the other blogger and confront her? “I don’t want to start a whole big blog war,” says Strohmeyer. “I don’t want the negativity. I try not to look at her website, but I see her photos on Food Buzz, Foodgawker and Tastespotting. I don’t know if people are going to make the connection.”

“She has a great blog,” Strohmeyer concludes. “She has a lot of great things going on. I feel like: Do your own thing.”

So far Strohmeyer has put on her big-girl pants and looked the other way. What would you do in this situation?

* * *

You might also like:

• Adjusting a Recipe Doesn’t Make it Yours
• Should Bloggers Be Praised for Recipes They Don’t Write?

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It’s a quandry. You want to entice readers to make your recipes, but you don’t want to just hit them over the head with sales pitches.

Fortunately, there are more subtle ways to attract people to a recipe. Here are five methods cookbook authors use to draw in readers:

1. Make them salivate. Describe the food and how it’s cooked so readers can not only imaging tasting it, but they see it, smell it, hear it, even imagine touching it. Here’s a headnote for South Indian-Style Eggplant Pickle, from Cradle of Flavor by Saveur Editor-in-Chief James Oseland that gets the senses going:

“This south Indian-style pickle is popular in Malaysian kitchens, although the sugar in it is a decidedly Malaysian addition. Similar to caponata, the Sicilian eggplant relish, it’s made of chunks of Japanese eggplants in a lavishly spiced sweet-sour pickling base. Coriander, fennel, cumin, chiles, ginger, and cinnamon all vie for dominance, creating a lush layering of flavors. The eggplants are fried and then put in the pickling base, rather than cooked in it. Japanese eggplants, which are commonly used in Malaysian cuisine, cook quickly, so frying them first give you more control, ensuring that they won’t come out mushy.”

Notice his evocative description, so specific that you can almost taste the eggplant. He assumes you may not know caponata, so he describes it too. Then he tells you how to cook the dish, so you can visualize it, like a movie. Oseland finishes by reassuring you that with his technique, you’ll create a superior dish.

2. Building on that last point, give readers the confidence to make your dish. Here’s the headnote from Alice Medrich’s Molten Chocolate-Raspberry Cakes from Bittersweet:

“Have you ever ordered one of these sexy little desserts in a restaurant only to find that the anticipated molten center has morphed into a cake instead of flowing sauce? Because small desserts are more easily overbaked than large ones, and because baking ties vary with different kinds of chocolate, I’ve concluded that the bet and simples insurance against disappointment (congealed sauce) is the buried-truffle method. During the short time in the oven, the truffle in each small cake melts to form a luscious sauce, while the cake gets fully baked. Although it sounds like a completely separate step, the truffles are actually created with a portion of the cake batter, so the whole process is quite efficient.”

You sense immediately that she knows exactly what she’s talking about, that you can make this cake and it will turn out just as well as hers. And you’re drooling by now, right? You see your fork cutting into the dark cake, and the shiny middle oozing out. She’s evocative even though she’s giving you straight-forward, trusted instruction.

3. Set a scene that transports people. Take them to a place you love, and give them a vicarious thrill. Here’s part of Carol Field’s headnote for Bagna Cauda, in Celebrating Italy:

“When the air in the vine-covered hills of Piedmont was thick with the aroma of newly made wine, workers once used to gather to share a pot of bagna cauda set over heat in the middle of a table. They would dip crisp raw autumn vegetables into the steaming garlicky mixture (yes, I know) of oil, butter, and anchovies. This rustic dish is part of an authentic gastronomic tradition persisting to this day…”

It’s a simple recipe for a sauce of butter, olive oil, garlic and anchovies, but now I’m right there with the workers, sitting on a bench in the crisp air of the countryside, dipping my fennel slice into a warm bowl of garlicy goodness, enjoying the view of rolling hills covered with grapevines.

You don’t have to go to Italy to write a headnote. Set a scene in Chinatown, around your best friend’s table, or at the beach. The point is to take your reader there and describe it specifically enough so they can imagine it.

4. Bowl readers over with enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is contagious and gets people excited about your recipe. I love the conversational style of Ina Garten’s cookbooks, like she’s your best friend letting you in on her secrets. Here’s a partial headnote for Jeffrey’s Roast Chicken, from How Easy is That? It shows how much she loves to cook and how she thinks everyone else should love it as well:

“Recently, I met some beautiful young women from Glamour magazine. They make a roast chicken they call ‘Engagement Chicken’ because every time one of them makes it for her boyfriend, she gets engaged! How wonderful is that? That’s the best reason I ever heard to roast a chicken…”

It’s like you are sitting next to her at a restaurant bar, drinking wine and wearing your Sex in the City shoes, trading stories and laughing. She exaggerates a little for effect, another time-honored tradition of storytelling. Even though her style is casual, though, she’s dead serious about getting you to make that chicken.

5. Extol without resorting to vague words like “wonderful” and “delicious.” Use specifics instead. Here’s a partial headnote from Susanna Hoffman’s cookbook, The Olive and the Caper, for Classic Shrimp and Tomatoes:

“Hardly a dish exists on the honor roll of Greek cuisine with more names than shrimp baked with tomatoes and feta…The proliferation of names gives testimony to one thing: a dish so popular, widespread, and classic certainly must sing with flavor. And it does. Few cheeses go with shellfish, but sheep’s milk feta blankets the tender shrimp with a sharp tang the way a wash of lemon juice cannot…”

I like the way she glories the dish, not her version of it. And she tells you why it’s wonderful, rather than resorting to using the word.

Do you love a particular cookbook because of its headnotes? Tell me which one and why.

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Think your readers will make your recipes flawlessly simply because you’ve made them more than once?

Mega-star and cookbook author Ina Garten of Barefoot Contessa fame doesn’t, even though she has worked in the food business for more than 30 years. She still relies on an assistant and her friends when developing new recipes.

In How Easy is That?, Garten says once she’s tested a recipe repeatedly, she hands it over to longtime assistant Barbara Libath. Then she watches Libath make it.

“Every time I do that, I learn something about how someone at home, with only the printed recipe in front of them, might make the dish,” Garten writes. She’s careful not to make assumptions that her target reader cooks the way she does, even though, like them, she is not a professionally-trained chef.

In her cookbook, Garten explains how she watched Libath make a tomato dish where she tossed the tomatoes, as she sliced them, into a pan to saute for 5 minutes. As a result,”The first tomatoes were overcooked and the last ones weren’t done enough.” So Garten changed the instructions to cut the tomatoes, put them in a bowl, and add them all at once so they would cook evenly. It’s a small change, but enough to make her feel more confident about the recipe’s success.

Garten also road tests every single recipe for her next cookbook on her friends, “so I know everyone loves the dish before it even gets into this book.” And she doesn’t mind doing so right on her show. In this episode, a friend tests her soup recipes on his guests.

I wanted to talk to Garten more about her testing techniques, but her publisher said she’s too busy.

By the way, Garten’s assistant Barbara Libath has appeared on a few episodes of the Barefoot Contessa. Here’s a photo of her, prepping on the set. She’s the one in the blue shirt.

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