Can You Cook Up Profits From A Recipe?

 By Bonnie Boots

I’ve been doing some consulting with a business that produces guides to making money online. One of the things that have the owners puzzled is the angry letters they occasionally get from people who swear they followed all the steps, yet fail to make any money.

The producers of the moneymaking guides are not shysters. They are ethical, reputable people. They’ve taken pains to produce guides that they feel anyone could follow, walking step by step through proven techniques for earning money.

The producers are both hurt and puzzled when some of their customers fail. Hurt, because their intention is for everyone to succeed, and puzzled, because they know, for an absolute fact, that the techniques they are teaching do work.

What, they ask me, is the problem? Why doesn’t everyone succeed?

I answer them by telling them the story of the chocolate chip cookie contest.

Among the many topics I’ve covered for newspapers and magazines is food. In that work, I’ve published a good many recipes and judged my share of cooking contests. Along the way, I discovered that no matter how carefully a recipe is written, people will always find unique ways to interpret it. And nowhere will you see those unique interpretations more vividly displayed then in a cooking contest.

One contest in particular stands out in my memory because the recipe was so basic and so simple that I expected the entries to be nearly identical. To my surprise, they were not.

The recipe was the original recipe for Toll House cookies, developed in 1937. The popular name for these popular cookies is “chocolate chip.” Because nearly everyone has eaten them, and most everyone who likes to bake has made them, I expected to see a good deal of consistency in the entrees. I was prepared, then, to search for subtle differences to choose a winner.

When I actually stepped into the judging room, I found I’d been 100% wrong. Some cookies were flat and thin and brittle. Some were as thick and fat as muffins. They varied in size, in color, in texture and in flavor. Year later, I still marvel that 12 people could make 12 batches of cookies from the same recipe and arrive at so many different conclusions.

What happened? Just this—

The recipe called for  “2 large eggs.” Some bakers used extra large eggs because they think the volume of an extra large egg today is closer to the volume of what was considered a large egg in 1937. One baker used duck eggs because she thinks they have more flavor, and the recipe didn’t specify chicken eggs.

The recipe called for “1 cup (2 sticks) butter”. Some of the bakers were quick to point out that this simple instruction doesn’t specify salted or unsalted, sweet or unsweet, and even Irish, Danish or American. (Note to the puzzled. Butter varies widely depending on the cow’s diet. Irish, Danish and American cows are all fed very different diets.)

The recipe called for 1 cup of chopped nuts. Since no particular type of nut was specified, the bakers used varieties ranging from pecans to macadamias.

Things got even trickier when it came to measuring the ingredients and baking. Some used baker’s scale to weigh and measure ingredients with absolute precision. Others were rather casual “guestimators.” Some put digital thermometers into their ovens to judge baking temperatures and times exactly. Others used the “looks done to me” principle.

So each baker read the recipe and followed it exactly—according to her interpretation of it. The result was 12 very unique cookies. Some of them were superb. And some of them were absolute failures.

That, I explained to the producers of the moneymaking guides, is exactly what happens when you sell a recipe, whether that recipe is for chocolate chip cookies or moneymaking. Each buyer reads the information, interprets it and then acts on it in their unique way.

Some will walk through step by step. Others will decide they don’t like steps 3 and 11 and skip them. Still others will stay with the program till step 4, then decide to try another method altogether. Still others will read the recipe, fail to take even step 1, then complain that the recipe didn’t work for them.

This does happen, and always will happen, whether you are selling—or buying—recipes to making money online or recipes to making Toll House cookies. It is the nature of language -- each person interprets words, written or spoken, in their own unique way. As a result, there will always be people who are unable to make even the most carefully produced products, books or instructions “work” for them.

The best we can do, as product makers, is to write as carefully and clearly as we are able, then be prepared to improve on our instructions as we get feedback from users.

The best we can do as product purchasers is to make sure we have read the “recipe” carefully, several times over, and then strive to follow it step by step. Then we should be willing to ask the seller for assistance in finding where and how we may have gone wrong.

I admit it’s contrary to human nature to actually read instructions. But sometimes being contrary is the best way to get results!

If this has made you hungry for Toll House cookies, here’s the original recipe, reposted from the Nestle® Company’s web site.

Estimated Times:
Preparation - 15 min | Cooking - 9 min | Cooling Time - 15 min cooling | Yields - 60

 
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