Eureka in the Kitchen! The Best Recipes Borne from Mistakes

Popular legend has it that the chocolate chip cookie’s creation was an accident. (A very, very happy accident, but an accident nonetheless.) While the Daily Mail reports the truth of the legend is up for debate, there’s no denying that mistakes happen in the kitchen. Often. And just like the cookie, they can produce grand results.

You Burn Things
One of our editors said she accidentally left trimmed “scraps of dough on the [baking] tray and they got almost burnt in the French style—bien cuit. Delicious.” We can see those charred crumbs sprinkled into a salad for texture—a good alternative to bacon bits for vegetarians!—or atop a vegetable gratin. Basically, treat them like breadcrumbs and tell your party guests they’re “smoked.”

The same goes for burnt bits of anything. Sure, those carcinogens aren’t great for you, but in small doses, they’re fine. So sprinkle them on pasta and enjoy the crunch.

You Don’t Follow Directions
“I once mixed cookie ingredients out of order—like no butter creaming involved—and they turned out fantastically, thereby shooting the whole idea of creaming the butter in the foot,” said Francesca Gilberti, an editor at OpenTable. “They were chewy and dense—not light and airy—but I like my cookies intense. So basically, if you need to, you can just dump and mix.”

You Mis-Measure
Years ago, another of our editors wasn’t paying attention while measuring out oil and vinegar for salad dressing. “Instead of the normal 3-to-1 ratio, I used about half lemon juice and half olive oil,” she said. “It was the best mistake I ever made; I get compliments on my ‘tart, bright’ salads every time I serve them.”

"I used the 1/3 cup instead of the 1/4 cup for the flour in chocolate chip cookies because the numbers were worn off,” said Hannah Sullivan of Alma Chocolate. “And they were magical! Like blondies but with chocolate chips and in cookie form.”

Your Cake Sticks
"Ditto a cake the got stuck," said Sullivan. "I was making Bundt cake and it totally stuck to the pan. It was horrible. So I turned it into trifle and it was way more special than the cake would have been.”

You Lose Track of Time
As for me? I once cooked marmalade down so far—I thought there was enough simmering time to simultaneously allow myself a bubble bath, but that was quite wrong—that it essentially turned into powder. What do you call that? “Dehydrated orange dust.” It works wonders tossed into buttered popcorn.

You Spill Things
"I mistakenly spilled a bit of fish sauce into some mayonnaise, so I decided to whisk it together, and it became a salty, seafood-y mock aioli,” said one of our mayo-loving readers. “I do it all the time now. Intentionally.”

You Don’t Pay Attention to the Labels
Working in Kosovo as a UN advisor, one of our friends ended a dinner party with a parfait. Six Italian men, two of them from Sicily, were in attendance. Instead of the prescribed cherry preserves, she accidentally opened a jar of chestnut cream, folding it into the mixture and failing to notice until it was too late. The men were waiting. The mold was formed. And, in the end, she received high praise—especially from the Sicilians.