Most of this weekend is taken up with the task of running the Red Pen Of Death over the second half of the Hughes Primary School 40th birthday multicultural cookbook, something I "volunteered" to do some months ago, and which appeared at our front door unannounced at dinner time last night, marked with the code name "urgent" and the regulation phrase "there's not much in it" (166 pages! At least my half comprises mostly desserts and other good things). Not having edited a recipe book before, I wasn't quite prepared for the additional factor of having to think about how each recipe works. It's amazing how many of the recipes I've checked thus far either have an ingredient mentioned in the main part of the recipe that doesn't appear in the list of ingredients, or vice versa. And the multicultural element is causing problems of its own: how, for example, am I supposed to ensure that the process of positioning paddy straws with banana leaf cones is adequately described when I've got no idea what either might look like; and then there is the vexed question of how obvious would it be that "there are no holes in the points". (My approach is that a complete novice is unlikely to attempt such a recipe, and if they did, they would be unlikely to blame their inevitable failure on inadequate editing.)
This type of job usually gives rise to one typo sufficiently rich as to make the process worthwhile. What can you say about a recipe that begins, "Measure the flour and sugar into a bowel"? The Health Department may have something to say about that.
