Cut them to size

The publishing world is far from ordinary. With the latest exposé on Oprah Winfrey, there is enough fire, or shall we say smoke to stir things a bit. But the comparatively duller world of cookbooks spiced up when Penguin Australia's newly published The Pasta Bible faced racial backlash; the recipe for tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto prompted readers to add 'salt and freshly ground black people.'

The error was brought to light when a member of the public contacted the publisher, which led to around 7000 copies of the book being returned to the Penguin warehouse to be destroyed and reprinted. Recalling copies already present in shops and stores was a task hailed as 'extremely hard' by head of publishing Robert Sessions, so no action has been taken in this regard thus far.

The misprint was present only in one recipe; the continual recurrence of pepper in the remaining over 150 recipes proves according to Sessions, that the error was a mere one-word slip. He also added: 'Proofreading a cookbook is an extremely difficult task. I find that quite unforgivable.'