recipe creation

In the heyday of print media, most major newspapers boasted a full test kitchen complete with a kitchen director. Prominent cookbook authors hired independent testers to make sure their recipes would work in home kitchens. But with declining revenues and tightening budgets, these resources are quickly vanishing, reports The Los Angeles Times.   

While food magazines like Bon Appetit, Saveur, and Cook's Illustrated still have large and busy test kitchens, only one US newspaper, The Los Angeles Times, currently has a full test kitchen staffed with a full-time director. The director, Noelle Carter, writes articles and oversees recipe testing.                                                                    

Other newspapers like The San Francisco Chronicle and Chicago Tribune still have and use test kitchens, but don't employ staff dedicated to recipe testing. Tribune Food Editor Joe Gray says staff writers make good use of the test kitchen. "Reports of our test kitchen's death have been greatly exaggerated," he says. "We still use it and rely on it heavily."

Newspapers without test kitchens, like The New York Times, frequently employ independent recipe testers, once the province of cookbook authors. Due to the decline in cookbook advances, those authors have to scramble to find help to test their recipes. Many online publications forego testing altogether, leading Russ Parsons to lament that recipe "reliability has gone into the basement."  (Yet another reason to use EYB to find the best recipes on the web.)