Culinary recipes, the way they are freely presented all over the internet nowadays, are innocuous, if not dangerous, tools for a cook.

Proper chefs don’t have real use for them for these people only need a glimpse of what goes in a particular dish to be able to recreate it in a better, personal way. Complete beginners, on the other hand, are usually put off already at the list of ingredients, which may include things like saffron or bay leaves and they have no idea where to find them in the supermarket.

Food enthusiasts, thus, are the main public for these online, often anonymous, cooking instructions. The problem is that if the guidelines in these recipes are followed ipsis litteris the end result, at least on a first try, is more often than not a total failure.

This is because 10 grams of butter never weighs 10 grams, all-purpose flours have different purposes depending on the country it’s in, ovens heat more or less according to their cleanliness, etc. More importantly, nobody can resist to add a “little family secret” to anything that they make — and some food combinations might be literally a killer (to the taste).

Yes, cooking instructions normally come with a note saying that results may vary depending on the products or kitchen appliances used. That is a lazy escape, though; a polite way to say “if you can’t make it like me your [sic] stupid”. What recipes should include is the breakdown of every ingredient so as to help cooks overcome the above said differences.

A carrot cake recipe, for example, should explain the function of the egg in the final product. This way the hopeful baker would be able to choose if he wants an airier or denser loaf by putting more or less of it in the blender. Just saying things like “add a pinch of salt” or “mix until the content is almost liquid” in the instructions is counterproductive for the cook cannot guess what to do next in case he messes up something.

To follow a recipe as they’re presented works pretty much the way many people go through their school years: you just apply a formula that worked before and wait for the results. There is no way to know what is going on in that pan, what chemical reactions are happening to make the dough double its size. Finding the “x” is the only thing that is going to be graded.

Not everyone cares about the difference a certain type of onion can make in a dish. Some people never make the association between the amount of cream put in a carbonara sauce and his increased assiduity in the bathroom the next day. Those who are concerned by these circumstances, however, should be able to understand the process without having to attend a cooking school.

The sooner we make this type of information available for everyone the less probable it is for a real Flubber to be created in a kitchen somewhere.