Poisonous recipe recalled
Swedish food magazine Matmagasinet had to recall its last issue after a recipe poisoned at least four people. They overdosed on nutmeg (a deliriant when taken in high doses) but are now feeling better. From AFP:
"There was a mistake in a recipe for apple cake. Instead of calling for two pinches of nutmeg it said 20 nutmeg nuts were needed," Matmagasinet's chief editor Ulla Cocke told AFP...Poisonous recipe recalled (Canada.com)
"We publish 1,200 recipes each year, and of course there have been times when they've had a bit too much butter or too little flour, but we have never experienced anything like this before," Cocke said.
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Wow, that's unfortunate. I understand nutmeg makes for a very long and unpleasant trip, as well.
That would be an awfully expensive apple cake, too. Nutmeg isn't cheap...
Why didn't anybody tell me I could tweak on nutmeg?!?!?!
@1 - Don't do it, it's not fun and the taste/smell of nutmeg will make you want to puke everywhere for the rest of your life.
it's cause you weren't hanging with the right people, Mujadaddy
Yeah, I bet it was an experience they never had before
hahaha
deliriant
The cake would have been inedible. Talk about their lawyers causing them a huge expense because they MIGHT get sued.
They should have just published an apology and correction in the next issue.
If some asshat wants to sue them, their lawyer could make the cake and bring it to the courtroom and have the judge take ONE bite. Case closed.
I don't know if there's some sort of Cooking Darwin Awards, but the fact that at least four people blindly followed a recipe that called for 20(!) nutmeg nuts makes me wonder about the state of Swedish home-cooking...
Thanks, Takuan.
SEE MOM I DID FOLLOW THE RECIPE, I'M NOT THAT BAD OF A COOK.
Umm how could someone first use 20 whole nutmegs by mistake, and two actually take more then one bite of the resulting cake.
Funny, I seem to recall reading exactly this same scenario in a SF novel. Can't remember who it was by or where I found it (maybe one of the Baen Webscription books), but it part of a series about a space hospital; this particular book in it was about an alien chef who came to the hospital in search of new challenges, and one of the incidents in the story was that, due to a series of misunderstandings, one of his recipes had been modified to include too much nutmeg.
The smell alone would kill you. Some people should not cook.
de nada, I musta hadda fever or sumthin...
Cripes! That revving sound I hear must be Julia Child spinning in the grave.
Perhaps some godly force will resurrect her and send her, with all dispatch, to aid the wayward cookers of Sweden.
Wow, if each nutmeg seed is between 5 and 10 grams, and assuming they were all median sized, that's 150 grams of nutmeg. That's a third of a pound of nutmeg! YUCK!
So shouldn't this be filed under "Cocke Up"? ;)
I can't believe the Swedish Chef has not been referenced here yet...
You take the vhort and put it in the sort de hoort! 20 norts of nortmort in the poort nort!
Maybe I shouldn't say this, but it seems much more likely to have been a prank by a young writer with (ahem) "field experience", than an actual mistake.
But seriously, as many have said, who could possibly follow this recipe? Grating whole nutmegs with a microplane is one of the more enjoyable parts of baking (they are firm and oily which makes them easy to grate, unlike mushy cheese or ginger; also, the cross-sections look pretty), but it would be noticably tedious to grind down 20 of them into a small mound of poison.
But then the magazine editors say this: "...it is simply not that easy to get hold of that much nutmeg,"
Uh, what? A standard tiny jar of nutmegs from the grocery store here in US has about 20 nuts; a jar of nutmeg powder, much more. Is nutmeg a controlled substance in Sweden?
Erowid is your friend.
Nutmeg is not, apparently.
Erowid Nutmeg Vault
A UK TV chef recently published a salad recipie that mistakenly included henbane!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article4457575.ece
Um, yeah, don't do that. Unless, you like feeling poisoned for a week, then go ahead. Also, #2 is dead on; you'll hate the smell of nutmeg for the rest of your life. Nothing like feeling ill around Thanksgiving and Christmas. What you say? Pumpkin-spice scented? YUCK!
Yaaay Erowid!
#11: The novel you're thinking of is "The Galactic Gourmet" by James White, in his Sector General series, published in 1996. http://www.sectorgeneral.com/books/galacticgourmet.html
@#19 No, nutmeg is not a controlled substance in Sweden. It's in most ordinary food stores. Most of the time they're packaged in a bag, maybe 3-4 per bag, usually.
I guess they meant that most people don't have 20 nuts at home.
@8: My feelings exactly. Anyone who knows the least bit about cooking (defined by already being able to cook from recipes) should get highly suspicious at the mentioning of 20 nutmegs.
Responsibility is NOT delegateable!
Who follows recipes anyway?!
I remember trying to trip on nutmeg by making a tea and it was only about half the recommended amount(all we had in the house). Tasted so bad, I couldn't finish it.
Reminds me of the time I accidentally put 20 hits of acid into a bowl of clam chowder.
It's an acquired taste.
My reaction when I saw this in a swedish newspaper was also that anyone even thinking of putting 20 whole nutmeg nuts in the same dish ought not to be in a kitchen.
And, kids, don't try this at home. The trip is said to be bad, at least a friend said so, and the dose that gives permanent damage overlaps the trip dose - so what is just enough for one person to trip on might be deadly for the next.
By the way, I love nutmeg - in moderate doses!