The Writing In The Margin
The other night, I made the Buttered Bean, Leek, and Cauliflower Salad from Fergus Henderson's Beyond Nose to Tail. Melissa and I ate it and noticed some things about it that didn't work — it has too much garlic, and you need to reduce the cauliflower to the smallest floret size. So I got out a pen and made a note in the book, overwriting the slim, small, italic type with my large and clumsy penmanship.
I romanticize books as physical objects almost to the point of fetishism. Maybe beyond. If you suggested that I take notes in the margin of, say, my Robertson Davies novels, which are mostly trade paperbacks, I would recoil in shock. Suggest I take notes in the margin of my nice hardcovers, and get the smelling salts ready.
But when it comes time to correct a cookbook, the pen emerges from its container and goes to work with nary a thought. Even nice cookbooks get the ink: My printing of the beautiful French Laundry Cookbook suggests 2 tablespoons of salt for the gnocchi recipe, but you're better off with 2 teaspoons. So noted.
For a long time, I tried to reconcile the urge to correct with the urge to protect. I made mental notes about the recipes and filed them in some corner of my mind: A corner that was almost always irretrievable when I made the recipe again. I tried keeping notes in a notebook, but I never added an index and, at any rate, never thought to look in the notebook when cooking commenced. Index cards bearing the addenda started in the cookbook, but eventually ended up on the floor or behind the butcher block or under the bookcase.
So finally I did the unthinkable. And I've never looked back.
If you still hold out and preserve your books' good looks, I salute your resolve. But if you're on the fence, think of it this way: A cookbook is a tool, and tools need to work for their users. Book artists sharpen their bone folders to get tighter creases in small spaces. Computer users set their layouts and preferences in ways that often frustrate others who sit at the same keyboard. And we should modify cookbooks to suit our needs.
That's how I rationalize it, anyway, when my brain shrieks at my hand to stop its destructive arc.
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