Look at these two current covers from Saveur and Fine Cooking. Shame on them. The editors imply that only perfect food is worthwhile, and that anything else you make is — well, sub par.
And who makes food that is less than perfect? Me. Most of us. Like you, I do my best. It looks good and tastes good. That’s enough for me.
But is it actually “perfect?” And who decides? Actually, I don’t need a critic over my shoulder, telling me my cooking is not good enough.
And if my food is not perfect, does that mean I’ve failed? I don’t want to fail at cooking.
Is this what cooking is all about now, that there is only one standard? You’d get that idea from the competitive cooking shows with their judges and stressed out contestants. And we writers continue this myth by using this word in publications and websites. All.The.Time.
At Real Simple, using “perfect” is forbidden, an editor told me.
If you are one of those writers who uses the word “perfect” when describing cooking, please stop. I cut the word out of recipe headnotes and titles. My clients are not asking me to do this. But I am so over “perfection” in recipe writing.
Imagine that you were teaching children. Would you want them to believe there is only one way to do something, and it was the perfect way, whatever that was? And if they couldn’t do it, that meant they had failed? You wouldn’t. Right?
So why do we expect this from each other? Is our profession full of perfectionists, control freaks, worriers, and anxiety-prone folks? Wow. We are something, aren’t we?
Cooking isn’t about perfection. It’s about joy, community, love, sharing, and creativity. That’s why I cook. It’s probably why you cook. So why do food writers lose sight of what’s really important?
Let’s stop, everyone. Right now.
YES! Amen to ALL of this. I am editing recipes for a large cooking website and I cannot tell you how many times I excise this from recipe headnotes. Nothing is perfect, and using that word is totally effete because it’s so overused. But seeing it over and over, editors and publications and writers must still think it has meaning. However, it does not inspire me to go running to the kitchen to figure out what makes this recipe “perfect.” It makes me cringe and run the other way. It’s also a little smug, as if to say–what makes YOU think it’s so perfect? Not good qualities all around.
Oh these are good points. It definitely is not inspiring to have to make perfect food. It sounds like a burden to me. Also that there is only one arbitor and it’s not you! Thanks Carrie.
Perfection is over-rated anyway!
Hah! That is the right attitude.
Thank you for this post and never being afraid to speak your mind honestly. I always glean insight. I’ve learned recently that what causes most people to not realize their goals and true capabilities and dreams is the thought that they/their “art” needs to be perfect, myself included. Perfectionism is paralyzingly. Let’s work toward our best, which is different for everyone, and be genuine.
My pleasure, Connie. As you saw I wrote about perfection before, but from a different angle.
Yes I am guilty of this whole perfection thing myself. Maybe that’s why I get so mad, when I see editors exploiting this insecurity within me. I’m sure they’re not conscious of it, though. They probably struggle with perfection as well.
Yes to this! This is why I only share photos of REAL meals that I actually eat. I think there are too many photos of food no one will ever eat inundating social media. It’s offputting to new cooks. I miss the days when there was one photo per recipe, perhaps a couple more if an unusual ingredient or technique necessitated it. Thank you for sharing this, Dianne.
Good point. Not only do we have to create perfect meals but we have to take perfect photos too, and sometimes of food we did not consume.
You took the words right out of my mouth! If we really want to help others learn to cook, then using “perfect” food photos isn’t the way. I’m all for cooking dinner, snapping a good photo and eating 🙂 because it shows what a real home cook does in a real home kitchen.
I couldn’t agree more. “Perfect food” has got be the number one intimidation factor in the kitchen. It keeps people from cooking for themselves and others, and therefore from sharing some of the best moments of togetherness we can. Chefs don’t even strive for perfection; they strive for balance, harmony and beauty. I’m all for a total ban on perfection…hell, I think it should extend to all aspects of living our lives! Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this, Dianne.
You are most welcome, Ilana. Thanks for illuminating the subject of whether chefs have to turn out “perfect” food. I had wondered about it myself, when I was writing this post.
And yes, let’s try to get rid of perfection in all aspects of our lives.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!
(For a fantastic discussion seeking “Good Enough” instead of “Perfect,” check out “The Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz…)
Ooh, I didn’t know about this book, Andrew, but it looks fascinating. Readers, if you’re curious, read about the book on Wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice
Completely agree. Thanks for sharing. Here’s a similar message I wrote in a post a number of years ago giving a nudge to a few somewhat pretentious leaders in the cooking world. My message “…use the guidelines of recipes and your intuition, enjoy what you create and worry not about perfection.” http://bit.ly/2f3vSlD
Fantastic. That quote from Kimball is scarey, but I don’t think he’s talking about being a home cook. Maybe he’s talking about what it takes to get a satisfactory recipe in Cook’s Illustrated, which involves lots of research and experimentation by many people dedicated to the task.
Simple. Easy. Tasty are among my generic go-to recipe descriptions. And I agree with Stephanie about photos too: Though others may disagree, there are too many photos of the same thing. I have to scroll scroll…. just to read the recipe.
Agreed. The new young cooks are constantly making everything look “instagrammable” and perfect. People are forgetting about soul and trial and error. Have any of these people watched the old Julia Child videos where things just some times didn’t turn out? This is the reality, obviously now with editing it is so easy to cut out the 3 times their cake DIDN’T rise properly. I live in new yOrk, and I see young chefs wanting to be famous, and that’s it. They forgot what cooking is about. Thanks for this. I used to use perfect as a joke, but now I won’t anymore, because people are taking it seriously!
Absolutely! One of my most commented on blog posts was where I shared a recipe that went wrong. Readers said that they felt relieved to know that not everything turns out the way you expect. We also put a note in our recent cookbook that everything you see is something that was eaten. We didn’t want to produce perfect pictures that aren’t actually the result of the recipe or what we ate.
Some of my best dishes have come from imperfection. My son cooks “by ear” as I say, but when he first started he tried making it like “mom does”. He made mistakes and they were so good, we threw away my recipes and started using his.
Dianne, a post after my own heart. Please forgive the tooting of my own horn, but this is exactly why I wrote a manifesto in defense of bad food for The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/08/the-curious-appeal-of-bad-food/494255/) .
I’ve found that, even beyond that one article, championing imperfection in food is a bit of an obsession of mine.
In the other hand, why not do your best? Not every family supper has to look perfect in photographs, but I do hope that my kids and my husband like to look at and taste what’s on their plates.
There’s nothing wrong with doing your best. I’m all for it. I’m suggesting that it’s not enough for “perfection.”
I have a friend who is very hesitant to try cooking since he’s so afraid of failure. He’d rather just eat out. The focus on perfection is only helpful to a small subset of people.
The more he eats out, the more he will find that his own cooking does not measure up, even if he has done a good job. This is part of the problem.
Amen! I’m a healthy cooking teacher and I find that the pressure to be perfect pushes people away from trying anything in the kitchen. There’s a space for “perfection” if you want to work in a top restaurant or strive to be the best chef EVER. However there is also another space for people who need to be able to cook at home and feel free to experiment. Cooking should be fun and functional.
I simply could not agree more! And most failures can be covered up with ketchup….
Yes so what are the editors of these two magazines thinking then? Their goal can’t be to push people out of the kitchen. Good point, Halona.
Absolutely! And let’s take it off of menus too. When I see “grilled/cooked to perfection,” I don’t even want to order the food.
It sounds like marketing-speak to me, like a generic way to describe food: cooked to perfection. What does that even mean?
Completely agree with all you say. With the same thoughts in mind I always required that the food pictures in my cookbooks look real and not perfects which scare most home cook trying to understand what went wrong. I also do not like food competitions tv show.
Yes this is another subject that is controversial — perfect photos in cookbooks. Of course we want our food to look great, but since perfection is not attainable anyway, we might as well stop there.
What a beautiful, inspiring post! I love how you singled out why those of us who cook keep doing what we do. And it’s not about perfection at all. Thanks for sharing. I needed this boost today, Dianne.
Thank you Betty Ann. It was a bit of a rant, but it was also good to define what it is that we love about cooking — and it is certainly not about trying to create “perfect” food. We are not lowering the bar at all by alieviating ourselves of this responsibility.
Such a fun rant! May I join in? These headlines remind me of fashion magazines: the perfect beach body, the perfect hair, the perfect wedding….The glossy magazines want to sell an aspirational lifestyle, so everything has to look better than they do in real life. Even if you avoid the word perfect they will still have to look and imply perfect. This is what they think inspires (taps into the insecurities of) their readers (and makes them buy the magazine)…and then there is the ‘ultimate, definite or complete guide’ to something or other. Isn’t this the usual language of mainstream media (at least in America. In most of Europe people might distrust such words as perfect )?
Thank you. Yes please, I’m interested in your point of view.
Yes, women — particularly — are supposed to be perfect, or at least aspire to it. I hope Europeans and the rest of the world don’t buy into this viewpoint.
I haven’t addressed this other issue of calling things best ever, complete, definite. That is more about marketing-speak, I think, and not as dangerous to the psyche.
So very true to everything!
Thank you Kay. I’m so glad you agree.