Today: A heads up to the first owners of the Genius Recipes cookbook, a printable errata sheet, and permission to use the hashtag #brisketgate.
Last week, thanks to a couple helpful, eagle-eyed Food52 community members, we learned that there is an unfortunate error in the first printing of the Genius Recipes cookbook.
Nach Waxman's Brisket of Beef recipe, when first published in The New Basics in 1989, called for 1 first-cut brisket of beef (5 to 6 pounds). The recipe was again published in The Brisket Book in 2011 as 1 (6-pound) first-cut beef brisket. On Food52 in 2012, it was virtually the same.
In the Genius Recipes cookbook, due to an early copy/paste typo that became more deeply entrenched with later revisions, it's printed as a One 16-pound (7.3kg) first-cut (a.k.a. flat-cut) beef brisket, which—no matter how much grass or corn our cows eat—will probably, hopefully never exist.
Waxman is a gracious genius, and had excellent advice and jokes when I told him about the snafu (or dilly, as he called it). The headline of this article (MEGA-BRISKET SPOTTED. POLICE BAFFLED.) was his idea.
But all jokes aside, my job in working on this book was to shepherd these recipes from the geniuses to you, and to take good care of them. I took this seriously, lost many nights' sleep over it, and enlisted as much help as I could. I feel terrible to have had Waxman's truly ethereal recipe mucked up on my watch. My only hope is that anyone looking for a 16-pound brisket will have butchers who set them straight.
More: 5 Lessons I Learned Writing the Genius Recipes Cookbook
The flub will be corrected in future printings, and has already been fixed in ebooks, but meanwhile, I would love if you can help me get the word out (and, heaven forbid, alert me if you see other errors). We designed a printable errata sheet (see below) that you can tuck into your books and send to anyone you've gifted it to (or come to a signing and I will correct it in person!). Tweet about it; tell your friends. Mock me if you like. Here's a hashtag: #brisketgate.
And if worse comes to worse, as Waxman told me: "If the world gives you too much brisket, make hash."
To print your errata sheet, go here (or click on the image below). To learn more about the book, go here.
Photos by James Ransom
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Written by: Kristen Miglore
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12 Comments
As a book editor, I know the book publishing process well. And I can attest that no matter how careful the writer and the team of editors are, some tiny (or not so tiny) mistakes always somehow creep in. I make annotations in many of my own cookbooks, whenever I discover an error. Many of my favorite cookbooks that are otherwise flawless contain a typo or two. I still think that your book is wonderful!
Second, A moment on Google will turn up the proper sized brisket.
Third, every cookbook has a typo. Now that yours has been found you can sleep at night. :-)
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