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BEYOND FAKE NEWS

The world is swimming in misinformation. Conficting messages bombard us every

day with news on everything from politics and world events to investments and alter-
native health.The daily paper, nightly news, websites, and social media each compete
for our attention and each often insist on a different version of the facts. Inevitably,
we have questions:

• Who is telling the truth?

• How would we know?
• How did we get here?
• What can we do?

Beyond Fake News answers these and other queries. It offers a technological and mar-
ket-based explanation for how our informational environment became so polluted. It
shows how purveyors of news often have incentives to mislead us, and how consumers
of information often have incentives to be misled. And it chronicles how, as technol-
ogy improves and the regulatory burdens drop, our information-scape becomes ever
more littered with misinformation. Beyond Fake News argues that even when we really
want the truth, our minds are built in such a way so as to be incapable of grasping
many facts, and blind spots mar our view of the world. But we can do better, both
as individuals and as a society. As individuals, we can improve the accuracy of our
understanding of the world by knowing who to trust and recognizing our limita-
tions. And as a society, we can take important steps to reduce the quantity and effects
of misinformation.

Justin P. McBrayer is Professor of Philosophy at Fort Lewis College, the liberal

arts college for the State of Colorado. He is Executive Director for the Society of
Christian Philosophers and Co-Editor of A Companion to the Problem of Evil (2013),
Introducing Ethics (2013), and Skeptical Theism: New Essays (2014).
“Justin McBrayer offers a wonderfully engaging account of our current
predicament regarding the spread of misinformation, and what we should
do about it.This book is a joy to read, and full of insight.”
Duncan Pritchard, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy,
University of California, Irvine, and author of
Scepticism:A Very Short Introduction

“Professor McBrayer deserves a lot of credit for tackling the problem of

fake news and misleading information head-on.With very clear and acces-
sible writing, he offers a fascinating look at how we got into our current
situation and how we can fall prey to misinformation. Most important of
all, he gives us good advice about how we as individuals and as a society can
do better. Highly recommended!”
Christian B. Miller, A. C. Reid Professor of Philosophy,
Wake Forest University, and author of The Character
Gap: How Good Are We?
BEYOND FAKE NEWS
Finding the Truth in a World of
Misinformation

Justin P. McBrayer
First published 2021
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Taylor & Francis
The right of Justin P. McBrayer to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-48310-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-48308-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-03925-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
For Hoot, who taught me how to answer Big Questions.
CONTENTS

Preface ix
Acknowledgments xviii

PART I
The Misinformation Market 1

1 Informational Litter 3
Fountains of Misinformation 5
The Catalyst of Electronic Media 13
Cheap and Easy 19

2 It’s the Economy, Stupid:The Supply Side of the

Misinformation Market 24
Follow the Money 25
A Pyramid of Strategies 32

3 Ignorance is Bliss:The Demand Side of the Misinformation

Market 40
What You Really, Really Want 40
How Consumer Preferences Shape the News 49

PART II
Why We Fall for Misinformation 59
4 Big and Little Questions 61
The Distinction 61
viii Contents

Prehistoric Minds 65
How Big Questions Can Get Us into Trouble 69

5 Intellectual Blind Spots 80

Hard-Wired for Success (But Only with Some Things) 80
The Citizens of Lake Wobegon: Errors of Bias 85
Rolling the Dice: Errors of Quality 93

PART III
How We Can Do Better 103

6 Building a Bridge 105

How the Academy Learned to Tackle Big Questions 105
Sorting the Signal from the Noise: Can We Trust Our Bridges? 109
Which News Is Fake? 114

7 Trusting Others 125

When Trust Goes Wrong 126
What Makes an Expert? 135
Knowing Who to Trust 140

8 Finding the Truth 148

Giving Up on Truth 148
Intellectual Virtues 153
The Rules of Engagement 156

9 Cleaning Up 164
Why Bother? 164
What Individuals Can Do 166
What Society Can Do 172

Notes 183
Annotated Bibliography 198
Works Cited 203
Index 222
PREFACE

You’re convinced: the news is fake. Or at least a lot of it is. From talk radio and
TV to blogs and Facebook posts, there is a lot of misinformation out there.You’re
confdent that you’ve been duped in the past.And you don’t want to play the fool
anymore.
What can you do about it?
This is a hard question to answer. Start with political misinformation. Suppose
you’re a political conservative, and you’ve had it that outlets like CNN constantly
criticize the Republican president and actively suppress stories about the many
good things his administration has accomplished. You can’t take them at their
word and expect to get the whole story. But, from now on, how should you
decide what’s really going on? On the other hand, suppose you’re a liberal, and
you’ve come to the realization that Fox News routinely delivers up half-truths
and sometimes outright fabrications in support of the political right. It’s pretty
clear to all but the ideologues that Fox is not a reliable source of information. But,
where can you turn?
This much is clear: what you can’t do is just change the channel until you fnd
a news source that you like.The fact that you like something is not a good reason
to think that it’s true. In fact, following our likes is one of the ways we got into this
problem in the frst place. If you want a Facebook post to get a lot of attention,
it needs to get a lot of likes. Serve up information that people will like (especially
political partisans), and you’re sure to get information that spreads widely. As it
turns out, for-proft news agencies know this, too, and some are willing to play
along, even when their stories are misleading or outright false. Given all this, liv-
ing your intellectual life by the rule that “if I like the news, it’s probably correct”
is a bad idea.
x Preface

So, then what should we do? This book is an answer to that question. It does
three things. First, it offers a sketch of just how polluted our informational envi-
ronment really is and a technological and market-based explanation for how we
got here. Second, the book sheds light on how we form beliefs about fake news-
related topics and pinpoints certain conditions under which our thinking goes
astray.Third, it offers some prescriptions on how we can do better, both as indi-
viduals and as a society.
In sum, this book has both a descriptive job and a prescriptive one. The
descriptive job happens in the frst two parts of the book and relies on the work
of scientists and economists. It offers a description of the fake news crisis and the
historical, technological, psychological, and economic factors that caused it.The
third part of the book is applied epistemology—a philosophical term for the study
of what we know and how we know it. It offers a prescription for how misinfor-
mation can be minimized and its effects marginalized.These are two sides of the
same coin—the identifcation of a problem and its solution.
Of course, you might agree that there’s a fake news problem but just not care.
If you don’t, you should. Here are four reasons. For one, it’s bad for anyone who
is trying to fgure out what to believe.We face a crisis of knowledge (an epistemic
crisis). This crisis makes it diffcult to determine who to trust and what is true.
Insofar as you care about believing the truth, you should be concerned about the
present crisis.
Second, truth isn’t the only victim of fake news. Real people are. For exam-
ple, recently there was a series of attacks on the Roma community in France
after social media reported rumors of a Roma man in a white van kidnapping
children. French police actually tweeted a response that included a banner with
“Fake News” in bright red, English text indicating that the rumor was false and
requesting that people stop sharing it.1 A similar thing has happened in Nigeria
where people posting fake news in the UK goaded local Nigerians into riots and
vigilante killings in response to unreal events.2
Third, fake news doesn’t just hurt others. It hurts us. For example, there is good
evidence that medical misinformation that is widely available on the web and on
social networks is having an adverse effect on people’s health.3 As the coronavirus
pandemic has made all too clear, we can’t just believe everything we hear in a
press briefng or everything we read online. Amazon lists over one-hundred self-
published books offering advice on surviving the pandemic.4 Contrary to social
media posts shared hundreds of thousands of times, oregano oil doesn’t prevent
coronavirus, chloroquine doesn’t treat it, and the US government doesn’t have a
patent on the virus.5
It’s getting bad enough that the White House actually asked tech compa-
nies in Silicon Valley to help fght disinformation about coronavirus online.6
 Preface xi

Yet much of the misinformation is circulating on social media platforms like

WhatsApp that use encryption to place messages beyond the control of cor-
porate fact checkers thereby exposing up to two billion people to a torrent of
false information about the virus and its cures.7 Fake news hurts us when we
rely on misinformation to guide our health, our relationships, or our fnancial
decisions.
Finally, fake news is bad for democracy. Knowledge is power, wrote Francis
Bacon, so when people are stripped of knowledge, they are stripped of power, too.
And when ordinary citizens don’t have the power, that means someone else does.
That’s not a democracy.
When the average person is involved in political decision-making, it’s impor-
tant that he has a basic understanding of the facts. Of course, it’s plausible that
actual democracies always have a tenuous and incomplete grasp of the facts. I’m
not saying that the American democracy or any other was ever ideal. But it’s clear
that a fake news epidemic makes a tough job even tougher.There is ample evi-
dence that news sources affect voting. For example, introducing Fox News into
a local area results in an increase in Republican vote shares by roughly half to
three-quarters of a percent.8 Of course, whether this helps citizens to understand
the facts depends on whether this effect is correcting a bias or introducing a new
one. But either way, the news has consequences.
The result of a polluted informational environment is either ignorance or
extreme partisanship (irrational party loyalty to the exclusion of open-minded
discussion). Both contribute to political gridlock. So even if you don’t care about
the fake news problem, you probably care about the effects of partisanship on
honesty, friendship, and effective governance.

The Connection between Partisanship and Fake News

It’s probably true that democracies have always faced partisanship to one degree
or the other. For example, the American Founding Fathers wrote passionately
about the dangers of factionalism. But, it’s also true that the partisanship in the
United States has gotten progressively worse in recent years and that these years
correspond with the rise of the fake news problem.While this isn’t a book about
political polarization, I’ll argue that it’s no accident that the fake news problem
overlaps with a period of polarization. Partisanship is one of the worst symptoms
of the fake news epidemic.
Even among the general population, Republicans and Democrats have both
moved away from the political center over the last twenty-fve years.9 Compare
the following two charts that illustrate how the median Republican and median
Democrat have moved further away from one another since 1994:
xii Preface

Political Polarization, General Population in 199410

Political Polarization, General Population in 2014

 Preface xiii

The amount of overlap between Republicans and Democrats has shrunk dra-
matically.This pattern is even more pronounced when we look not at members of
the general public but at Americans who describe themselves as politically active:

Political Polarization, Politically Active Population in 1994

Political Polarization, Politically Active Population in 2014

xiv Preface

As these charts make clear, ideologues from both the left and the right have
fed the political center. This shift has been more dramatic among liberals. The
percentage of Democrats who described themselves as liberal on all or almost all
tested dimensions has nearly doubled from just 30% in 1994 to 56% in 2014 (and
that was before the 2016 election!). In comparison, the shift among Republicans
is less dramatic, from 13% registering as consistently conservative in 1994 to 20%
two decades later.
Not only have we become more extreme in our politics, but our antipathy
towards citizens across the aisle has spiked as well. In the mid-1990s, even parti-
sans weren’t likely to view political opponents unfavorably.Twenty years’ time has
changed this dramatically:

A Rising Tide of Mutual Antipathy

Partisans are now increasingly defning themselves by what they are against
rather than what they are for, and this leads to increasingly negative feelings about
those on the other side.11
This antipathy can be seen in our judgments about everyday life. If you’re a
Democrat, would you be upset if your daughter married a Republican? If you’re
a Republican, would you be upset that your son married a Democrat? American’s
answers to these questions have shifted from the 1960s. While there’s limited
data on this particular question, what we do have paints a nasty picture.12 In the
’60s, about 5% of Americans said they would be upset if a son or daughter mar-
ried someone across the aisle. Those were the good old days. In 2010, 40% of
Republicans and 30% of Democrats would be upset at the prospect of a party
intermarriage.
It will come as no surprise that this sense of loathing has only increased since
the 2016 election cycle. Currently, almost half of people who self-identify as
 Preface xv

Republican or Democrat view those in the opposing party as being downright

evil.13 About a ffth of partisans think of political opponents as less than fully
human.To top it all off, about 16% of Republicans and 20% of Democrats think
that the country would be better off if large numbers of their opponents died,
and nearly the same percentage thought that violence would be justifed if their
candidate lost the 2020 election.We are well past just disagreeing about the facts
or proposals for fxing the nation’s problems.We’re moving towards civil war.
This rise in partisanship is intimately linked with the rise of fake news.14 In
1970, almost 80% of Americans with televisions tuned into one of three nightly
news programs every evening.15 While Americans still had their political disagree-
ments, they operated from a shared basis of fact and wide exposure to counter
points of view. Nowadays, voters have multifarious options for news, political
commentary, information, and misinformation. In 2012, more Americans got
their news from select cable channels or talk radio than from network television.16
In this environment, it becomes all too easy to trust one’s own favored experts and
to exclude all others. Pretty soon we have crazy things like alternative facts, echo
chambers, and ideological bubbles.
In turn, polarized news sources drive the partisanship further.17 There is clear
evidence that polarization breeds extremism and partisanship. In one classic
experiment, a group of 60 American citizens were brought together and privately
polled on their political views on a dozen controversial issues.18 They were then
sorted into three kinds of groups: those with only liberals, those with only con-
servatives, and those with mixed membership. Each group was asked to come to
a consensus on one of the controversial topics polled previously. Almost without
exception, each member of the conservative-only group ended up with more
conservative positions than the ones he started out with. Similarly, most members
of the liberal-only group ended up holding personal views that were more liberal
than where she started.
Being lumped with like-minded people can exacerbate your initial views
and make them more extreme. And it’s not a matter of information or evidence,
either. Sorting people into like-minded groups can make the members hold more
extreme views even when no information is shared among them. The shift isn’t
explained by evidence. It’s explained by peer pressure.
These effects aren’t restricted to the artifcial environment of a psychology
experiment. For example, Republican-appointed judges show highly conserva-
tive voting patterns when seated only with fellow Republicans on the bench
but moderated voting patterns when they deliberate with Democratic-appointed
judges.19 Democratic-appointed judges do the same on the liberal side. It’s easy
to go along when there are no dissenting voices. Polarization breeds extremism.
When you assume that other people think about the world in the same way
that you do but behave differently, the difference must be a function of the other
person’s character or morals. If she believes what you do but acts differently, it
must be because she wants different things or has different values. How can liber-
als know what I know about abortion and yet vote pro-choice? They must be
xvi Preface

moral monsters. How can conservatives know what I know about gun deaths in
America and yet vote with the NRA? They must be selfsh or wicked.
But the problem, of course, is that the two sides don’t know the same things.
They’ve been watching different channels and following different people on
Twitter. Polarizing the information landscape naturally leads to changes in our
moral appraisals of one another. Democracy requires that we agree about the basic
facts even if we disagree about what to do about them.The fake news crisis has
undermined that foundation of shared information.
Before turning to a detailed description of the problem, let me say something
about the nature of this book and its author. First, the book is not technical. It’s
been written to provide a general audience with a thirty-thousand-foot overview
of the fake news crisis landscape. The book does not presuppose that you are a
specialist in psychology, philosophy, journalism, or anything else. For that reason,
I will avoid jargon, technical discussions of data, and feld-specifc terminology.
All of the references for points made in the text are indicated with superscripts
and available as endnotes where the interested reader can fnd them.Additionally,
there are a handful of discursive comments that are footnoted on the page in
which the note is relevant. I’ve also included a short, annotated bibliography that
offers some suggestions for readers wanting more specifc and detailed study on
the fake news epidemic.
Second, I should say something about who I am.This is a book about politics,
worldviews, bias, and good thinking.You have a right to know about your source.
I am a professional philosopher, teaching at a public college in the American West.
One of my specialties is epistemology—the study of knowledge and the condi-
tions under which beliefs are justifed, true, reasonable, and so forth. However, I
am not a scientist. So, when I sketch the descriptive story of how humans form
the beliefs that they do, I will do so by relying on the exceptional empirical work
done by colleagues in the sciences.
Furthermore, I am not politically partisan. Partisans are marked by two features.
First, they are supremely confdent that one of the existing political platforms gets
everything right (or mostly right). Second, they are unable to appreciate the force
of reasons marshaled by their opponents. They are typically unable to articulate
the positions or reasons of the other side in a way that the other side would rec-
ognize as accurate.That leaves partisans thinking that members of the other side
must be stupid, ignorant, or evil.
Against all this, I don’t think that any of the major parties either in the US or
abroad gets everything right (or even mostly right). I haven’t voted a straight ticket
since college many years ago. I wouldn’t describe myself as particularly liberal or
conservative. I think that reasonable people can disagree about controversial mat-
ters like political positions, and there are often good arguments for contrary points
of view. I think skepticism and compromise are both healthy. I aspire to be what
political scientist Thomas Patterson calls “level-headed” about politics.20
 Preface xvii

Finally, I should confess that I’ve fallen for fake news, too. I wrote this book, in
part, for me: I want to do better. If you picked up this book, you probably want
to do better, too. And all of us want our society and political institutions to be
responsive to facts over fears. Let’s get started.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Books don’t get written without a lot of help from other people. This book is
no exception. Every day, I have the privilege of working alongside two frst-rate
philosophers, Dugald Owen and Sarah Roberts-Cady. I’m a constant benefciary
of their insight, wisdom, and criticism. Rachel Lee served as my research assistant
in the spring of 2019 and was an invaluable asset. Debra Parmenter and the Fort
Lewis Foundation provided some of the funding necessary to complete this work.
Thanks to them.Thanks also to the present administrators of Fort Lewis College
for prioritizing faculty research: Dean Jesse Peters, Provost Cheryl Nixon, and
President Tom Stritikus.
I received voluminous and careful feedback from a number of folks who read
excerpts or even full drafts of the early manuscript. Thanks to Kip Boyd, Nellie
Boyd, Brian Burke, Sandy Irwin, Matthew Krichman, Anna McBrayer, Garrett
McBrayer, Peyton McBrayer, Dugald Owen, Virginia Young, and three anony-
mous peer reviewers for Routledge Press. Other thinkers interested in this project
provided timely insights that made for a more well-rounded and tightly argued
volume.That list includes Michael Bergmann, Michael Dichio, Robert Faris, John
Martin Fischer, Isaias D'Oleo Ochoa, and no doubt others that I have forgotten.
Heath Sledge is the best independent copy editor an academic could hope
for, and her encouraging but critical commentary helped me to turn academic-
speak into something a normal person could understand.At Routledge, thanks to
Andy Beck for believing in this project and providing quick and clear guidance
throughout the publication process. Finally, thanks to my family, Anna, Patrick,
and Aeneas, who had to put up with books about fake news lying around the
house and too many hours of dad watching news clips online. Anna also created
the cover design and created or prepared each of the images in the text.
 Acknowledgments xix

Thanks to the many researchers whose work appears in this volume. Part I is
largely about topics in economics and technology. Part II is largely psychology.
Part III is philosophical, with an emphasis in epistemology. That’s a wide range
of subjects that no scholar can hope to master. I rely on the work of many of
my colleagues in the academy to bring some of the results of these disciplines
together in one volume.Thanks in particular to the Pew Research Center, Oxford
University Press, and Ad Fontes Media for granting permission for me to repro-
duce images of some of their exceptional empirical work. I rely on two images
from Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts’ book Network Propaganda
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018) and an image created by Vanessa Otero,
J.D., and Ad Fontes Media, Inc. Sometimes a picture paints a much clearer picture
of the truth than prose, and the graphs and images in this book are no exception.
PART I

The Misinformation
Market
1
INFORMATIONAL LITTER

You wouldn’t go to the doctor unless you thought something was wrong. Similarly,
you wouldn’t bother reading a book about how to make your view of the world
more accurate unless you had a reason to think that there was a problem. This
frst part of the book sketches the problem of fake news by outlining the scope
of misinformation that we regularly face and the incentives that drive both the
supply and consumption sides of the misinformation market.
The comparison between a landscape and an information-scape is apt. In a
landscape, your view of the natural world and its beauty can be marred by litter,
pollution, or flters. Sometimes the litter is the result of bad actors, and sometimes
it’s the result of negligent fellow citizens. It’s no different in an information-scape.
Your view of the truth and its relevance can be marred by the litter of misin-
formation or the flters you use to sort incoming information. Sometimes this
misinformation is the result of bad intentions (as in the case of propaganda), and
sometimes it’s the result of negligence (like homemade coronavirus cures posted
on Facebook).
The goal of this chapter is to explain just how littered our informational envi-
ronment is and why it’s worse now than it has been in recent years. Figuring this
out doesn’t require us to craft some kind of special defnition of “fake news.” On
the face of it, something counts as fake news if it’s misleading and yet news.
Some people defne fake news more narrowly. For example, some mainstream
journalists defne fake news as deliberately constructed lies that are intended to
mislead the public.1 Some people call this “disinformation,” and it’s fne to focus
on that given recent political history. But for our purposes, this is a distinction
without a difference.We don’t want our view of the world distorted whether it’s
done on purpose or not. So, we can rely on a much more general understanding
of fake news.While many of the examples in this book will focus on the recent
4 The Misinformation Market

surges of political disinformation from political parties, foreign governments, and

biased news outlets, the big picture is about so much more.
Fake news is misleading information (mis-information).a Intentionally false
stories are certainly included in the category of misinformation, but there are
lots of ways to deceive people that don’t requires saying what’s out-and-out false.
That’s why spin doctors make such a good living.
For example, one way to mislead someone without falsehoods is to report
some true things, but not the whole truth.This is called cherry-picking.The risk
of cherry-picking explains why courts require people to swear to tell the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.Any given story includes literally hun-
dreds of different facts, and a news source can report on a mere handful.Thus, one
easy way to mislead readers is to select just the part of the truth that is useful for
your interests or your readership and leave it at that.This is how one and the same
event can be reported in very different ways on MSNBC and Fox News even
while the anchors on both sides speak nothing but the truth.
Here’s an example of cherry picking. Consider the federal tax cuts initiated by
President George Bush.2 Surprisingly, both of the following things are true:

• The 10% of Americans with the highest incomes received over 50% of the
tax relief.
• The Bush tax cuts made the overall system more progressive by requiring the
wealthy to pay a higher percentage of their income relative to the less wealthy.

How could those both be true? Because you can lower the overall rate while
adjusting how much each income bracket within the reduced total will pay. And
that’s exactly what the tax cut did. Reliably, conservative news outlets promoted
the second fact more than liberal outlets, and liberal outlets promoted the frst
fact more often—and sometimes to the complete exclusion—of the second fact.
That’s cherry-picking.
Fake news also includes cases in which the whole truth is presented but framed
in biased or unfair ways. As we’ll see how you frame an issue affects how others
understand it. For example, reporting that the economy held steady in the second

a Researchers often have reasons to draw more fne-grained distinctions among the body of fake
news.The most useful set of fne-grained categories I’ve seen is from Wardle, “Fake News.” She
draws many different distinctions, but the following, three-fold distinction is most helpful:

• Misinformation is a false message but one that was not intended to deceive the audience, either
because it was presented as satire or else because the mistake was unintentional.
• Disinformation includes any false claims that were fabricated with the intent to deceive an
audience.
• Malinformation includes true claims that are used in an attempt to harm.

On this way of categorizing things, an honest mistake by a local reporter is misinformation, a polit-
ical ad claiming that Bush planned 9/11 is disinformation, and revenge porn is malinformation.
 Informational Litter 5

quarter is different than reporting that the economy failed to grow in the second
quarter. One of the most widely shared stories on immigration in 2015 was a
Breitbart story about a Motor Voter Act in California with the title “Jerry Brown
Signs Bill Allowing Illegal Immigrants to Vote.”3 Every sentence of the story was
true, but the probability that even a single illegal immigrant would be given the
right to vote was so small that the title was an inaccurate way to frame the story.
(This article and similar ones in 2018 were debunked by fact checkers on both
the right and the left.)4
So, a news source can be misleading even if it reports the whole truth.Your
view of the world can be manipulated by others even when they don’t say what’s
out-and-out false. Fake news should be understood to include misinformation of
all sorts, intentional or not. It should include stories that are false even if they were
not propagated as such. Some false stories are circulated by people who genuinely
believe them. If you care about having an accurate view of the world, then you
should be concerned about all of these cases.
The simple fact is that we are being bombarded by fake news of all sorts every
day. And while this assault has increased with the rise of electronic media, as it
turns out, our informational environment was never pristine.

Fountains of Misinformation
For those tempted to think that fake news and its ilk are a newfound phenom-
enon, you had better sit down. Since the dawn of animal life, we have sought to
deceive one another in certain circumstances. Delicious butterfies take on the
color of a poisonous and foul-tasting species. Cuttlefsh males disguise themselves
as females to boost their odds of copulation. Having a language only makes it
easier to deceive others. Sometimes it’s good for me that you believe the wrong
thing, and where there is a motive, there is a temptation.
But liars aren’t the only problem we face. Sometimes this misinformation is well-
intentioned: other agents are themselves misinformed, and they pass that misinforma-
tion along to those around them.That means we are often on the receiving end of
misinformation from both the liars and the deluded. In either case, accepting such
misinformation leaves us with mistaken beliefs about our world and the people in it.
Finally, sometimes we are our own worst friend.That’s because in at least some
cases, the misinformation starts with us. We sometimes believe things that don’t
make any sense. In particular, we tend to believe things we like, things that make
us feel better about ourselves, and things that seem common or typical (more
about this in Chapter 4).When your gut tells you something or when you arrive
at a particular view about the world, you should do some verifying of the facts on
the ground before trusting yourself to have gotten it right.
The short of it is that there are many sources of misinformation, and no short-
age of bad actors who will manipulate us for their own ends. Here are a few illus-
trations to give this overall sketch of the landscape some needed color.
6 The Misinformation Market

Start at the level of the individual. There is good evidence that you lie every
day.5 (If you just thought to yourself, “I don’t lie that much,” then thank you for
making the point. Self-deception is a kind of lying, too.) In fact, one recent study
showed that most participants in the study lied an average of two or three times
during a 10-minute conversation with another participant.6 While we shouldn’t
put too much stock in a single study of this sort, even if the number of lies is off
by an order of magnitude, it’s still clear that we lie an awful lot.
We are also deceptive without actually lying. Recently, various infuencers on
social media have been caught faking their own sponsorships in order to trick
their followers into thinking that they were more important and popular than
they actually are.7 And while paid advertisements are required to be disclosed,
there are no rules against faking a paid advertisement when you were not actu-
ally paid.
But it’s not just that we lie to one another. We also genuinely believe some
crazy stuff ourselves, and we try to get others to join in. This isn’t a problem of
malicious individuals trying to get you to believe something that they don’t. It’s a
problem of ignorant individuals who are trying their best to enlighten you.
You probably know about some of the strange things people from bygone eras
believed. For example, if you were a European peasant during the Middle Ages,
you probably thought that witches could cast spells on people, that cutting some-
one open to let them bleed would cure a host of illnesses, and that sperm had little
tiny humans inside of them.
However, you don’t have to go medieval to end up with strange beliefs. In
1975, over 60% of the American public thought that the assassination of MLK
was part of a huge government-orchestrated conspiracy, and in 1991, 31% of
Americans thought that FDR knew about the impending Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor but did nothing.8 There is no good evidence for either claim.
Contemporary people have plenty of crazy beliefs, too. How can I convince you
of that? The problem, of course, is that even if some of our current beliefs about
the world really are problematic, it’s not easy for us to see that. After all, we’re the
ones who believe them. If you could go back in time and tell a medieval peasant
that sperm don’t have tiny humans in them, he likely wouldn’t believe you, either.
Here’s what I can do. I’ll provide a list of some problematic things that many
current people believe. If you’re an average American, you probably believe at
least something on this list. But you almost certainly don’t believe everything on
this list. Many of these claims will strike you as just totally bizarre. And that’s
enough to make my point that, even by your own lights, we live in an environ-
ment in which a lot of individuals believe crazy stuff. Here are some whoppers
that have been documented in recent surveys:

• Most Americans think that there was a cover-up by the government of the
assassination of John F. Kennedy and that more than one shooter was involved
in the assassination.9
 Informational Litter 7

• 80 million Americans think alien UFOs have visited earth.10

• Many people think that the contrail lines left in the sky after airplanes pass
over are actually chemtrails from government agents trying to manipulate
everything from the weather to mind control.11
• One-third of Americans believe that vaccines can cause autism in children.12
• 42% of Americans think that 9/11 was an “inside job,” and that the US gov-
ernment covered up evidence in the offcial investigation.13
• One-third of people on earth today either deny that the Holocaust occurred
or think that it has been greatly exaggerated.14
• Many people think that sugar and food coloring make children
hyperactive.15

If none of these examples convince you that humans can be genuinely but obvi-
ously confused, I encourage you to peruse the website for the Flat Earth Society.16
I have no idea how many members the society has or how many people share its
views, but the fact that there is anyone who would endorse this strange concatena-
tion of pseudo-science and conspiracy theory should be enough to alert you to
the fact that individual humans can be spectacularly wrong on their own without
the help of Russian trolls.
But, of course, individuals aren’t the only pushers of information in the
world. There are groups of humans who coordinate efforts in a way that provides
them with outsized infuence on our informational environment. The most
obvious examples of these are corporations and governments. Let’s take each
one in turn.

How Corporations Manipulate the Truth

Companies have lied to consumers, stockholders, and government offcials from
day one. The huge number of false campaigns used to sell quack medicines
in the 19th and early 20th century is an obvious example (Chapman Hall’s
Canker and Dyspepsia Medicine Cures All!).17 That’s not to say corporations
always lie—they don’t. In fact, they almost certainly tell the truth more often
than they lie, especially in today’s regulatory environment. But that hasn’t pre-
cluded stock-price-driven executives from stretching the truth or fabricating
the news when they think they can get away with it. Anyone reading this book
is likely to remember the accounting scandals that took down companies like
Enron,WorldCom, and Tyco.Those were cases of executives and auditors lying
to stockholders and government offcials. But companies also lie directly to us.
You thought that diesel Volkswagen car you bought was good for the environ-
ment? Nope.
Recently my kids and I were fipping through old magazines from the 1960s.
The ads were the best part. One ad in particular caught my kids’ attention: a ciga-
rette ad claiming that smoking a particular brand of cigarettes was good for your
8 The Misinformation Market

asthma.Yeah, I bet. Here are some more recent examples of corporations littering
the informational environment with less than fully honest claims:

• Sketchers claimed that its Shape-Up shoes toned your body as you walked.A
40 million dollar settlement with the FTC said otherwise.18
• Kellogg’s advertised their Rice Krispies cereal as boosting immune systems
in the face of the H1N1 swine fu scare of 2009. Probably boosted sales.
Defnitely wasn’t true.19
• Bayer promoted its One-a-Day multivitamin with a whole host of medical
benefts, including an increased resistance to prostate cancer.The only prob-
lem was that the touted ingredient (selenium) didn’t affect prostate cancer
rates and actually increased diabetes rates.20
• General Mills’ “strawberry with natural favors” fruit roll ups were found to
have neither strawberries nor natural favors in the ingredients. Oops.21

These examples are not isolated.A Google search will bring up hundreds of cases
in which corporations deceive the public in various ways.
Sometimes corporate misinformation is limited to a single ad or product. But
in other cases, it amounts to large-scale fraud, perpetrated over decades, with dev-
astating effects.The most obvious example in this category is the long-term fght
that tobacco companies put up against scientifc fndings showing that smok-
ing increased the risks of cancer and other health problems.22 If the public per-
ceived smoking as a death sentence, sales of tobacco would plunge. How could
the tobacco companies survive?
The answer was to keep consumers from trusting the scientifc evidence.This
strategy has come to be known as “the tobacco strategy”: if you can’t produce
scientifc evidence favorable to your point of view, then cast doubt on the exist-
ing evidence. To do so, tobacco companies sowed seeds of doubt by undermin-
ing the credibility of the scientists or their work or both. If consumers could be
convinced that there was a scientifc debate about the validity of the results, then
they lost a motivation to stop smoking.The goal wasn’t so much to disseminate
open lies but instead to obfuscate the truth. How is any consumer supposed to
compete with that?
But, of course, doubt isn’t a company’s only option when it comes to propa-
ganda.23 They can also manipulate the informational environment in more direct
ways. Here are the three most potent.24 First, a company can bias the research
process. This is where a company sponsors its own labs and research so that it
controls the fow of research. If you produce twenty studies over the course of the
year, you can publish only the studies that support your position.You can bury
the rest.The result is a steady stream of research in support of the party line. For
example, Purdue Pharma has come under scrutiny since the US Justice depart-
ment concluded that it knew about the addictive nature of drugs like Oxycontin
and yet didn’t release those fndings to the public.25
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 mutton kidneys à la Française, 213
Oxford receipt for mutton kidneys, 214
oyster patties, 359
oyster sausages, 87
patties à la pontife and à la cardinale, 360
pork cutlets, 251
rissoles, 387
salmis of game, 292, 294
savoury croquettes of rice, 386
savoury rissoles, 387
sausages and chestnuts, 262
scallops of fowl au béchamel, 277
Sefton, a, or veal custard, 362
small pain de veau, or veal cake, 222
spring stew of veal, 224
stewed beef-steak, 189
stewed calf’s feet, 228
stewed duck, 278
stewed leg of lamb, with white sauce, 245
stewed ox-tails, 195
stewed tongue, 203
sweetbread cutlets, 227
sweetbreads, stewed, fricasseed, or roasted, 227
truffled sausages, or saucisses aux truffles, 263
veal cutlets, 225
veal cutlets or collops, à la Française, 226
veal cutlets à l’Indienne, or Indian fashion, 225
veal cutlets à la mode de Londres, or London fashion, 226
veal fricasseed, 231
minced, 230
vol-au-vent, 357
small vols-au-vents, 374
Entremets, apfel krapfen (German receipt), 373
apple cake, or German tart, 362
apple calf’s feet jelly, 464
Charlotte, 486
apple custards, 482
 apple, peach, or orange fritters, 384
apple hedgehog, or Suédoise, 480
apple tarts, 363
apricot blamange, 479
arocē docē, or sweet rice à la Portugaise, 489
asparagus points, dressed like peas, 319
barberry tart, 364
Bermuda witches, 491
blamanges (various), 476-479
Entremets, Black caps, par excellence, 460
boiled custards, 481
brioche fritters, 384
buttered cherries, or cerises au beurre, 490
calf’s feet jelly, 461, 463
canellons, 385
canellons of brioche paste, 385
cauliflowers à la Française, 326
cauliflowers with Parmesan cheese, 325
Chantilly basket, 474
Charlotte à la Parisienne, 487
chocolate custard, 483
cocoa-nut cheese cakes, 371
compote of peaches, 459
compotes (various) of fruit, 457, 458
constantia jelly, 467
creamed tartlets, 375
crême à la Comtesse, or the Countess’s cream, 472
croquettes of rice, 385
croquettes of rice, finer, 386
croustades, or sweet patties à la minute, 387
cucumbers à la crême, 324
cucumbers, à la poulette, 324
currant jelly tartlets or custards, 375
custards (baked), 483
custards (various), 481, 484
dressed maccaroni, 392
fairy fancies, 368
fanchonettes, 374
forced eggs, or eggs en surprise, 447
French beans à la Française, 321
gâteau of mixed fruits, 461
gâteau de pommes, 460
gâteau de riz, 433
gâteau de semoule, 430
genoises à la Reine, 366
German puffs, 484
Gertrude à la crême, 487
green peas à la Française, 320
green peas with cream, 321
imperial gooseberry fool, 480
Italian creams, 475
jaumange, or jaune manger, 477
Jerusalem artichokes à la Reine, 338
lemon calf’s feet jelly, 467
lemon creams, 475
lemon fritters, 384
lemon sandwiches, 374
lemon sponge, 480
lemon tartlets, 372
lobster au béchamel, 89
lobster salad, 142
Louise Franks’ citron soufflé, 378
Madame Werner’s Rosenvik cheese cakes, 372
Madeleine puddings, 432
Meringue of pears, 486
Meringues, 550, 551
mincemeat fritters, 383
mince pies, 369
mince pies royal, 370
monitor’s tart, 370
moulded rice, or sago, and apple-juice, 422
mushroom-toast, 330
mushrooms au beurre, 329
Nesselróde pudding, 491
omlette aux fines herbes, 380
omlette soufflée, 381
orange calf’s feet jelly, 434
orange fritters, 384
orange isinglass jelly, 465
oranges filled with jelly, 466
pancakes, 382
pastry sandwiches, 374
plain common fritters, 381
pommes au beurre, or buttered apples, 488
potatoes à la Maître d’Hôtel, 315
potato boulettes, 314
potato fritters, 384
potato-ribbons, 313
potted meats, 303
prawns, 93
pudding-pies, 371
Queen Mab’s summer pudding,[195] 470
quince blamange, 478
ramakins à l’Ude, 375
raspberry puffs, 375
rice à la Vathek, 440
salad of lobster, 142
sea-kale, 316
sea-kale stewed in gravy, 316
scooped potatoes, 312
spinach à l’Anglaise, 317
spinach (French receipt), 316
stewed celery, 341
strawberry blamange, 477
strawberry isinglass jelly, 468
strawberry tartlets, 375
suédoise of peaches, 488
sweet carrots, 336
sweet casserole of rice, 438
sweet maccaroni, 490
Swiss cream, or trifle, 473
 tartlets of almond paste, 367
tipsy cake, or brandy trifle, 474
tourte meringuée, 363
trifle (excellent), 473
truffles à l’Italienne, 331
truffles à la serviette, 331
turnips in white sauce, 334
Venetian fritters, 383
Vol-au-vent à la crême, 358
Vol-au-vent of fruit, 358
Vols-au-vent, small, à la Parisienne, 374
Epicurean sauce, 151
Eschalots, to pickle, 537
to serve with venison, 284
Eschalot sauce, mild, 127
vinegar, 152
wine, 153
Espagnole, or Spanish sauce, 100
with wine, 100
Fairy Fancies (fantaisies de fées), 368
Fanchonnettes (entremets), 374
Fancy jellies, 469
Fermentation of bread, 604
Feuilletage, or fine puff paste, 345
Figs, stewed, 492
Fillets of mackerel boiled, 71
of mackerel, fried or broiled, 71
of mackerel stewed in wine, 72
of soles, 65
of whitings, 68
Fillet of mutton, 238
of veal au béchamel, with oysters, 215
 of veal, boiled, 217
of veal, roast, 216
Finnan haddocks (to dress), 74
Fish, to bake, 55
boiled, to render firm, 54
brine, for boiling, 54
best mode of boiling, 53
to choose, 48
to clean, 50
cooking, mode of, best adapted to different kinds of, 51
fat for frying, 55
to keep, 51
to keep hot for table, 56
to know when cooked, 55
to sweeten when tainted, 51
salt, to boil, 62
salt, à la Maître d’Hôtel, 63
salt, in potato-pasty, 350
shell, dishes of, 85
Flead, or fleed crust, 347
Flavouring, for sweet dishes, 456
Flounders, to boil, and fry, 75
Flour, browned, for thickening soups, &c., 131
Flour of potatoes (fecule de pommes de terre), 154
of rice, 154
Fondu, a, 379
Forced turkeys’ or swans’ eggs, 447
turkey, 268
Forcemeats, general remarks on, 156
Forcemeat balls for mock turtle, No. 11, 161
chestnut, No. 15, 162
Mr. Cooke’s for geese or ducks, No. 10, 161
 good common, for veal, turkeys, &c., No. 1, 157
another good common, No. 2, 157
French, an excellent, No. 16, 163
French, called quenelles, No. 17, 163
for hare, No. 8, 160
mushroom, No. 7, 159
oyster, No. 5, 159
oyster, finer, No. 6, 159
for raised, and other cold pies, No. 18, 164
common suet, No. 4, 158
superior suet, No. 3, 158
Fourneau économique, or portable French furnace, 494, 495
Fowl, a, to bone, without opening it, 265
to bone, another way, 265
Fowl, to bone, for fricassees, &c., 266
to broil, 274
à la Carlsfors, 273
fried, à la Malabar (entrée), 276
hashed, 276
minced (French and other receipts), 277
minced, French receipt (entrée), 276
roast (French receipt), 273
to roast a, 272
scollops of, au béchamel, 278
Fowl-Guinea, to roast a, 273
Fowl, wild, 294
salmi of, 294
Fowls à la mayonnaise, 278
to bone, for fricassees, curries, and pies, 266
boiled, 274
cutlets of, English (entrée), 275
fricasseed, 275
cold, fritot of, 277
cold, grillade of, 278
French batter, for frying fruit, vegetables, &c., 130
melted butter, 109
breakfast cake, or Sally Lunn, 549
crust, for hot or cold pies, 347
receipt for boiling a ham, 258
Maître d’Hôtel sauce, 116, 117
rice pudding, 433
partridges, 290
semoulina pudding, 430
salad, 140
salad dressing, 140
salmi, or hash of game, 292
thickening, or roux, 106
beans, à la Française, 321
beans, an excellent receipt for, 322
beans, to boil, 321
Fresh herrings (Farleigh receipt for), 74
Fricandeau of veal, 223
Fried anchovies in batter, 84
bread-crumbs, 131
bread for garnishing, 131
canellons, 385
cod-fish, slices of, 61
Jerusalem artichokes, 338
mackerel, 70
parsnips, 337
potatoes, 313
salsify, 341
soles, 64
Fritters, apple, apricot, orange, or peach, 384
brioche, 384
cake, 382
lemon, 384
mincemeat (very good), 383
orange, 384
 plain, common, 381
of plum pudding, 382
potato, 384
of spring fruit (rhubarb), 383
Venetian, 383
Fruit, to bottle for winter use, 522
creams, 475
en chemise, 570
isinglass jellies, 464-469
to weigh the juice of, 498
directions for preserving, 496
remarks on preserved, 493
stewed, 456-459
tart, with royal icing, 363
Frying, general directions for, 176
Galantine of chicken, 266
Galette, 557
Game, to choose, 281
directions for keeping, 281
gravy of, 289
hashes of, 292, 294
Gar-fish, to broil or bake, 77
Garlic, mild ragout of, 126
vinegar, 152
Gâteau of mixed fruits, 461
de pommes, 460
de semoule, or French semoulina pudding, 430
de riz, or French rice pudding, 433
Geneva buns, or rolls, 601
Genevese sauce, 117
Genoises à la Reine, or her Majesty’s pastry, 366
German puffs, 484
 pudding, 412
pudding sauce (delicious), 413
yeast, observations on, 598
Gertrude à la Crême, 487
Gherkins, to pickle, 532
to pickle, French receipt, 533
Ginger biscuits, cheap, 560
bread, 553
bread, Acton, 552
bread, cocoa-nut, 553
bread, thick, light, 551
candy, 565
oven cakes, 552
wine (excellent), 584
Glaze, to make, 104
Glaze, to, pastry, 345
Glazing, directions for, 182
for fine pastry and cakes, 345
Goose, to deprive of its strong odour, Obs: 271
to roast, 271
to roast a green, 271
Gooseberries, to bottle for tarts, 499
dried, with sugar, 499
dried, without sugar, 501
Gooseberry jam, red, 500
jam, very fine, 500
jelly, 500, 501
paste, 501
pudding, 435, 408, 420
sauce for mackerel, 120
Grape jelly, 520
Gravies, to heighten the colour and flavour of, 96
 introductory remarks on, 84
shin of beef stock for, 97
Gravy, good beef or veal (English receipt), 99
Baron Liebig’s beef (most excellent), 96
rich brown, 99
Gravy cheap, for a fowl, 101
another cheap, 102
curried, 302
Espagnole, highly-flavoured, 100
Espagnole with wine, 100
for a goose, 102
in haste, 101
jus des rognons, or kidney gravy, 101
orange, for wild fowl, 102
veal, rich, deep-coloured, 98
veal, rich, pale, or consommé, 97
for venison, plain, 99
for haunch of venison, 283
rich, for venison, 100
sweet sauce, or gravy, for venison, 100
soup, or stock, clear, pale, 10
soup, cheap, clear, 11
soup, another receipt for, 10
Gray hen, to roast, 291
Green goose, to roast, 271
mint sauce, 132
mint vinegar, 152
orange plum, preserve of, 514
peas, à la Française, 320
peas, with cream, 321
pea-soup, cheap, 40
peas-soup, excellent, 39
peas-soup, without meat, 39
Greengage jam, or marmalade, 515
Groseillée, 513
Ground rice puddings, 435
in pudding-pies, 371
Grouse, to roast, 292
salmi of, 292
Guava, English, 520
strawberry jelly, which resembles, 505
Guinea-fowl, to roast, 273
Gurnards, to dress in various ways, 74
Haddocks, baked, 73
to boil, 73
Finnan, to dress, 74
to fry, 73
Ham, to bake a, 258
to boil a, 256
to boil a (French receipt), 253
potted, excellent, 304
Hams, Bordyke receipt for, 256
to garnish and ornament in various ways, 257
to pickle, 254
superior to Westphalia (Monsieur Ude’s receipt), 255
genuine Yorkshire receipt for, 253
Hamburgh pickle, for hams, beef, and tongues, 197
another pickle, for hams, beef, and tongues, 197
Hare, to choose, 282
forcemeat for, No. 8, 160
sweet gravy for, 284
in pie, 352
potted, 307
to roast, 284
to roast, superior receipt, 285
soup, superlative, 32
soup, a less expensive, 32
stewed, 286
Haricots blancs, 338
Harrico, Norman 224
Hashed bouilli, 206
calf’s head, 213
fowl, 276
venison, 284
Hash, a, of cold beef or mutton (excellent), 205
common, of cold beef or mutton, 205
cheap, of calf’s head, 213
Norman, 206
Haunch of mutton, to roast, 234
of venison, to roast, 282
Herrings, fresh (Farleigh receipt), 74
red, à la Dauphin, 84
red, common English mode, 84
Iced pudding, Nesselrôde, 491
Ice, advantage of, for jellies, fine paste, &c., 575
Ices, observations on, 575
currant, 576
raspberry, 576
strawberry, 576
Icing, for tarts, &c., 345
white or coloured, for fine pastry, or cakes, 543
Imperatrice plums, to dry, 521
very fine marmalade of, 521
Imperial gooseberry fool, 480
Imperials, 545
Indian Burdwan, 612
common currie, 299
curried fish, 615
lobster cutlets, 611
 pilaw, 614
corn, to boil, 329
Ingoldsby Christmas pudding, 416
Ingredients, which may all be used in making soups, 1
Invalid’s, the, new baked apple pudding, 608
Irish stew, 242
Isinglass to clarify, 454
jelly, Constantia, 467
jelly, orange, 465
jelly, strawberry, and other fruit, 505-508
Italian creams, 475
jelly, 470
meringues, 551
modes of dressing maccaroni, 391-393
pork cheese, 260
Jack-bottle, 170
spring, 170
Jam, apricot, or marmalade, 516
barberry, 526
cherry, 502
currant, best black, 512
currant, black, 511
currant, red, superlative, 509
currant, white, a beautiful preserve, 510
damson, 519
gooseberry, red, 500
gooseberry, very fine, 500
green gooseberry, 499
greengage, 515
of mixed fruits, 483
of Mogul plums, 515
peach (or nectarine), 518
raspberry, 506
raspberry, very good, red or white, 507
 raspberry, very rich, 506
rhubarb, 498
strawberry, 504
Jaumange, or jaune manger, called also Dutch flummery, 477
Jellies, calf’s feet stock for, 453
to clarify calf’s feet stock for, 454
to clarify isinglass for, 454
fancy, 469
meat, for pies and sauces, 103
cheaper meat, 103
Jelly apple, 522
apple, exceedingly fine, 523
apple, calf’s feet, 464
barberry, 527
calf’s feet, 461, 462
calf’s feet, modern varieties of, 463
calf’s feet, strawberry, 468
lemon, calf’s feet, 467
orange, calf’s feet, 464
orange isinglass, 465
orange, very fine, 465
orange, Seville, very fine, 530
Constantia, 467
black currant, common, 511
black currant, fine, 511
currant, red, 508
currant, red, French, 509
red currant, superlative (Norman receipt), 509
currant, white, very fine, 510
damson, 519
green gooseberry, 498
ripe gooseberry, 500, 501
red grape, 520
guava, English, 520
to extract the juice of plums for, 497
mussel plum, 516
 quince, 525
raspberry, 507, 508
rhubarb isinglass, 468
Siberian crab, 526
tartlets, or custards, 375
strawberry, very fine, 505
John Dories, small, baked (author’s receipt), 58
John Dory, to boil a, 58
Jewish almond pudding, 608
table, general directions for the, 609
cookery, remarks on, 606
sausage, or Chorissa, 607
smoked beef, 606
Julep, mint (American), 582
Jumbles, 556
Kale, sea, to boil, 316
stewed in gravy (entremets), 316
Kater’s, Captain, receipt for boiling potatoes, 312
Kedgerse (an Indian breakfast dish), 612
Kentish, receipt for cutting up and curing a
pig, 254
suet pudding, 407
Kidneys, mutton, à la Française, 243
mutton, to broil, 244
mutton, Oxford receipt for, 244
Kidney, beef, to dress, 204, 205
Kohl-cannon, or Kale-cannon (Irish receipt), 315
Lait, du, à Madame, 451
Lady’s, the, sauce for fish, 117
Lamb, cutlets, in their own gravy, 246
cutlets, with Soubise sauce, 216
 cutlets of cold, 246
leg of, with white sauce, 245
roast loin of, 245
loin of, stewed in butter, 246
to roast a quarter of, 244
roast saddle of, 245
sauce for, 132
Landrail, to roast, 291
Lard, to melt, 248
to preserve unmelted, for many months, 248
to, a pheasant, 287
Larding, general directions for, 181
Larding-needles, 181
Lardoons, 181
Leeks, to boil, 318
Lemonade, delicious, milk, 583
excellent, portable, 583
Lemon, calf’s feet jelly, 467
creams, 475
dumplings, 421
fritters, 384
jelly, calf’s feet, 467
pickle, or catsup, 150
pudding, an excellent, 426
sandwiches, 374
sponge, or moulded cream, 480
suet pudding, 427
tartlets, 372
Lemons in mincemeat, 368, 369
to pickle, 534, 538
Lettuces, in mayonnaise of fowls, 278
stewed, 319
in salads, 140, 141
Liebig’s, Baron, directions for boiling, 53
for roasting, 171
beef gravy, 96
extract of beef, 6
Limes, to pickle, 538
Liver, calf’s, to roast, 229
stoved, or stewed, 228
Lobsters, to boil, 88
boudinettes of (author’s receipt), 92
Lobster, or crab, buttered, 89
butter, 138
cutlets (a superior entrée), 91
cutlets, Indian, 611
cold dressed, 88
fricasseed, or au béchamel, 89
hot, 89
patties, common, 359
patties, superlative, 359
potted, 90
salad, 142
sausages, 91
Luncheon cake, 555
Macaroons, almond, 544
cocoa-nut (very fine), 545
orange-flower, 544
Macaroncini, to boil and to choose, 390
Maccaroni, Genoa, to boil, 391
Neapolitan, to boil, 391
ribbon (or lazanges), to boil, 391
to choose, and other Italian pastes, 390
to dress à la Reine, 393
to dress in various ways, 392
with gravy, 392
ribbon, 391
 soup, 13
sweet, 490
Mackerel, to bake, 69
baked (Cinderella’s receipt, good), 70
to boil, 69
broiled whole, 71
fillets of, boiled, 71
fillets of, broiled or fried, 71
fillets of, stewed in wine (excellent), 72
fried (French receipt), 70
stewed with wine, 72
Madeira cake, 548
Madeleine puddings, to serve cold, 432
Magnum bonum plums, to dry or preserve, 515
Mai-Trank (German), 620
Maître d’Hôtel sauce, cold, 133
sauce, French, 116
sauce, maigre, 117
sauce, sharp (English receipt for), 116
Majesty’s, her, pastry, 366
pudding, 410
Mandrang, or mandram, West Indian receipt, 323
another receipt for, 323
Mangoes, lemon, 538
peach, 534
Marmalade, apple, for Charlotte, 487
apricot, 516
barberry, 527
Imperatrice plum, 521
orange (Portuguese receipt), 527
clear (author’s receipt), 529
orange, genuine Scotch receipt for, 528
peach, 518
 pine-apple, superior (a new receipt), 513
quince, 524
quince and apple, 525
Marrow bones, baked, 208
to boil, 207
Marrow, clarified, to keep, 208
vegetable, to dress in various ways, 327
Mashed, artichokes, Jerusalem, 338
carrots, 336
parsnips (see turnips), 333
potatoes, 313
potatoes, crust of, for pasty, 350
turnips (an excellent receipt for), 333
Mayonnaise, a delicious sauce to serve with cold meat, &c., 135,
136
French, 617
Swiss, 617
Mayor’s, the Lord, soup, 17
soup (author’s receipt for), 18
Meat, jellies for, pies, 104
pies, crust for, 347, 348
puddings, 399-401
rolls, excellent, 360
Mélange of fruit for rice-crust, 570
or mixed preserve, 513
Melon, to serve with meat, 325
sweet pickle of, to serve with roast meat (good), 534
Melted butter, 108, 109
Meringue of pears, or other fruit, 486
of rhubarb, or gooseberries, 485
Meringues, 550
Italian, 551