Have a friend who was a newspaper reporter for a mid-sized city back in the 1960s. The editor required every reporter to spend one day a month taking incoming phone calls from the public. My friend said without doubt most calls had to do with the newspaper's weekly recipe column (which were usually bought from a service). There were no food editors back in the 1960s in small city newsrooms and certainly no kitchen-testing was done. Errors like 1/2 cup of salt, instead of 1/2 teaspoon of salt were not uncommon and my friend presumes these same recipes were printed in newspapers all across America.
When I lived in Mexico for five years, I wrote a recipe column for a monthly ex-pat magazine. Many of the recipes were ones I gleaned from local women at markets or at their homes (and my Spanish is not all that good). And while I kitchen-tested each recipe and (thought I was) being assiduous in my ingredient lists and directions, I was always amazed at the errors/omissions I caught before submitting to my editor. A few got past me; my editor (who had written this monthly column previous to my stint) caught those. Well, all but one.
I have a great amount of respect for food writers, but I always try to make sense of a new recipe before I start assembling ingredients and cooking.
