One thing I love about cookbooks is that every author lends their own voice to the recipe through the instructions and notes. This gives every book its own vibe and personality, and I will sometimes pull a book off the shelf as much for its tone as for a specific recipe. Authors also develop their own quirky phrases for recipe instructions, which I often find charming but which sometimes annoy me to distraction.

One such phrase is "season to perfection", which I find both vague and imperious: it demands perfection from the reader, yet offers no clue about how to achieve that. Why not just say "season with salt and pepper" and provide an estimated starting quantity? The phrase reminds me of the time my grandmother graciously wrote down a bunch of family recipes for me but did not provide much by way of instructions. One recipe only included the baking temperature but not the time. I called her to ask how long I needed to bake it and she replied "until it's done." That answer, while factual, was incredibly unhelpful. I eventually pried a time estimate out of her, which ensured a successful outcome. (I still treasure that booklet of recipes, which now contains my own notes penciled in next to her instructions.)

But I digress. Back to the matter at hand - should I just shrug off annoying phrases because they don't have any bearing on whether the recipe is a success, or is life too short to put up with text that grates on my nerves? Should it matter that I'm put off by a book's introduction noting that the author has a nanny look to after her child while she is puttering about in her (swoon-worthy) kitchen? There seemed no reason to mention the nanny other than to signal status, which I find odious. That made it harder for me to appreciate the recipes that followed.

There is no shortage of cookbooks that I could read for hours without being annoyed once (anything by Diana Henry or Nigella Lawson, for instance). Why not just cook from those and do a Marie Kondo on the ones I don't love? Because, as I recently learned, I might miss out on excellent recipes by being pedantic or judgmental. I cooked several recipes from the "season to perfection" book; most were fantastic and will be frequently repeated. I'm glad I overcame my irritation to try these recipes, and I hope that I remember this lesson the next time a phrase rubs me the wrong way.