Millissa Frost, Recipe Tester

Any cookbook author worth his or her salt employs recipe testers. It is one thing for a professional cook to work years of experience into a dish and make it magical. It is quite another for a home cook to approach a previously unseen page and turn the written word into a meal. If you have ever perused the acknowledgment section of a cookbook, you will likely see a list of names of people who cooked many or all of the author’s creations and given feedback as to whether it worked for them. As someone who loves enticing new recipes, my first thought is always, “How do you get that gig?”

I recently befriended a woman who is a professional recipe tester, and it turns out that the job is as fun as it sounds but also requires a knack for precision and detail. Millissa Frost of Underhill, Vermont, has worked with renowned cookbook authors Molly Stevens and Melissa Pasanen as well as at the popular magazine Eating Well. She started on her path with a simple phone call.

Frost was interested in cooking since her early twenties, and for a short time she considered forming a catering business. As often happens, life got in the way.

“For a brief time I wanted to do a catering company but then I got pregnant and was so sick and couldn’t stand to be around food. After I had Francesca, I talked to a friend who played tennis with Molly [Stevens]. I just called her and said I would love to get together and talk about what you do and recipe testing. I didn’t immediately start working with her but ended up working with Melissa Pasanen for Cooking with Shelburne Farms”  [Avery 2007; also by Rick Gencarelli]. That was Frost’s first foray into recipe testing. She later worked with Stevens and also at Eating Well in Shelburne.

To test a recipe, Frost gets a copy of it and first checks the ingredients and amounts to make sure they make sense. From there, she follows the recipe exactly as it is written. When the dish is completed, she rates the meal from 1 to 4 and makes notes about whether she liked it and would make it again. For Stevens and Pasanen, she tested each recipe once, and if it turned out well, she’d move on. For Eating Well, each recipe was tested seven times to ensure success could be replicated. (With that much testing, if the recipe fails, it is fair to say the fault is with you.) I wondered if it was awkward telling an author that she didn’t care for a recipe, but she insisted that is what the authors are looking for: feedback, positive or not.

Were there any failures? Frost says, “It’s been pretty rare. Molly in particular is an impeccable writer. Both Molly and Melissa had other testers also. I think if you look in a cookbook and they don’t have them, it’s a bad sign. If you get a recipe from them, you know it is going to work.”

Melissa Pasanen concurs. She says, “I think recipe testers are indispensable and, all too often, are not valued as they should be. Not only can they catch errors in recipes, but they can help troubleshoot difficult recipes and make recipes better. I also think people underestimate how hard the job is—especially those who love to cook and think it would be fun. It can be fun, but you do actually have to follow the recipe—exactly—to test it. That’s not something most active cooks do in their own kitchens.”

Frost usually works out of her house; part of the point of recipe testing is to see how they fare in home kitchens. This means her family was the beneficiary of some truly delicious food. I wondered if they ever protested if she had to make something twice. “They were very tolerant. They didn’t mind. Doing it here, that would be dinner. If I did it again, I wouldn’t usually feed it to them.” Cost of the food is included in her fee. She charges by the recipe, which she says ranges depending on the author but declined to disclose what that is.

I also wanted to know what one of the more elaborate recipes she tried was. After giving it a minute’s thought, she replied, “Shelburne Farms’s Shepherd’s Pie. There were so many steps, but it was so worth it.”

After so much experience with the craft of formulating a recipe, I was curious if she had ever been tempted to write a cookbook of her own. “It does intimidate me. I feel like there are so many out there, I would need to find that hook of what I’m passionate about. If anything it would be Italian. Pasta and general Italian. My dad’s Italian and I’ve traveled there. I love the different regions and what they cook.”

Millissa, if you ever decide to write that cookbook, I wholeheartedly support you. And as for people to test your recipes… you know where to find me.

Molly Stevens | @mstevenscooks
Melissa Pasanen | @mpasanen
Eating Well | @eatingwell
Cooking with Shelburne Farms
Shelburne Farms | @shelburnefarms