There are certain recipes that reduce my wife to such a state of nervous disintegration that she is forced to lean on me abjectly. I mean the sort written by authors who haven't yet heard the good news about the invention of weights and measures. And if a recipe writer still hasn't got round to the concept of ounces and pints, you can bet your bottom tealeaf that he hasn't managed to grasp the principles of written communication either, or of predicting what tools and materials he is going to need until he has picked them up………..

I hear despairing cries from the kitchen, and find my wife set on making a recipe which starts off: "Pour a fair amount of milk into a medium sized bowl, and throw in a generous handful of soya beans. Add a modicum of grated cheese and the quantity of chopped chives which will lie on a sovereign piece (or a sixpence, if you prefer less. Or more, to taste)" I help my wife choose a particularly medium sized looking bowl, and supply the generosity for measuring out the soya beans.

"Take a few eggs," the recipe goes on, "and carefully separate the whites from the yolks. Now whisk them into the mixture." The whites or the yolks? We compromise with half of each.

"Fry the mixture for a few minutes over a hottish flame, until it is the colour of a walnut sideboard, and there is a black edging around the shredded onion." The shredded onion? "This should have been added before the soya beans in order to keep the milk from curdling.

Now quickly transfer the mixture to a cast zinc stew pan." "Run around the corner," shouts my wife, and buy a cast zinc stew pan." I run all the way there and back. "You'll have to go out again," she cries on my return. "After I've transferred the mixture to the cast zinc stew pan I've got to add a very large eggcupful of icing sugar."

Without a word of protest I run all the way back to the corner shop and get the icing sugar. "No, no,no!" shouts my wife as I stumble back into the kitchen with it. "I've got the icing sugar, I want you to buy the very large eggcup."

When I stagger painfully back into the room again with the eggcup, I find my wife sieving tiny pieces of raw meat out of the mixture. "The recipe," she sobs, says: "Pour the mixture over a jam-jarful of minced beef." "Then why are you taking the beef out again?", "Because the next sentence says:", " The beef should have been roasted for an hour first." We force-roast the beef, and brace ourselves for what lies ahead.

"Place an asbestos mat beneath the dish," says the recipe, "and beat it with a wooden spoon. Continue beating until, at the bottom, the top of it is covered underneath with a grey sauce of sodden soya bean. The bottom of it should rise out of it, coming through the top of it (the pan) until the rest of it (the bottom of it) can be separated from it, and placed in a pie dishbeaten to the consistency of thin gruel.

When a fine, blue, aromatic smoke begins to rise, the mixture is hopelessly overcooked." It is quite late when the fine, blue, aromatic smoke at last curls out of the oven, and we are both very tired and weak with hunger.

My wife turns over the page and reads the last sentence of the recipe: "Before serving, store in a cool place for at leas t a fortnight to allow fermentation to finish."