Why do Recipes Invariable Serve Four?

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 52% of Australian households have one or two persons living in it – that’s more than half.  Of those 48% with three or more, many will include young children who won’t eat today’s published recipes and even of those with three or more non-toddlers, at least one will be out doing something else.  In the real world, the overwhelming majority of meals are cooked for one or two persons.  Then why is it that recipes invariably serve four or six?  I can only surmise that publishing recipes that serve two has been prohibited by the Cookbook Authors’ Association.

Their prohibitions aside, could it be that, at least on TV, chefs always cook for at least four to ensure that the camera person, sound person and floor manager all get a feed?  Perhaps, but that still doesn’t explain why almost all the published recipes are written for four.

Or do cookbook authors imagine that most of us eat baked beans on toast or takeaway six nights a week and pull out cookbooks only when guests show up?  While their supposed presumption of mid-week dining doesn’t match that of anyone I know, cookbooks collecting dust until dinner parties might actually be close to the mark – a recent statistic quoted on radio was that 0.6% of recipes published in magazines are ever prepared, I presume that’s per copy sold.  Are cookbooks actually opened only for guests or could it be that normal household cooks find the adjusting of quantities and guessing at changed cooking times to suit two to be too tedious?  Or are recipes written to be looked at, but not cooked?  However one looks at it, it tells you something about how out of touch most cookbook authors really are.

A brief viewing of cooking television illustrates this.  Jaime Oliver is always filmed cooking for his mates.  Ditto with Kylie Kwong.  Bill Granger has filmshots cooking for his family.  Nigella Lawson always cooks extra to stock the larder for the temptation she can never restrain herself from indulging.  But for Karen Martini, Stephanie Alexander, Maggie Beer, Neil Perry, Jill Duplex, Simon Bryant and the rest of them, there simply isn’t even a pretence of an excuse.  Maybe it is the threat of a Cookbook Authors’ Association disciplinary tribunal.

But there is one other possible reason why published recipes invariably serve at least four.  Maybe, by assuming that these celebrity chefs actually create most of the recipes they publish, I’m giving them too much credit.  It could be that cookbook authors don’t so much write recipes as tinker with those already in print, changing beef to lamb or mashed potatoes to lentils to look like a new recipe and the challenge of adjusting the recipe to serve two would be stretching their capability too far.  If the reason most cookbook recipes serve four or more is that their authors cannot adjust their inherited repertoire to serve two, it’s all the more reason to not buy their cookbooks.

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Tags: “Australian Bureau of Statistics”, “Bill Granger”, “Cookbook Authors’ Association”, “Jamie Oliver”, “Jill Duplex”, “Karen Martini”, “Kylie Kwong”, “Maggie Beer”, “Neil Perry”, “Nigella Lawson”, “Simon Bryant”, “Stephanie Alexander”, cookbooks, copy, create, four, households, magazine, recipes, serve, serves, six, statistic, two