Recipe for Disaster is Slate’s column about the things recipes get wrong—and how to fix them. If you’ve noticed a recipe annoyance, absurdity, or outright lie, file your complaint here and we will investigate!

Like the great George Costanza once said, “I gotta focus. I’m shifting into soup mode.” Feel the air, folks; it’s finally soup season—our fridges are stocked with carrots and crunchy stalks of celery, our pantries are equipped with onions, and our eyeballs are scanning the internet (and hopefully some cookbooks) for the next great soup recipe.

This month’s column is inspired directly from a concerned reader, whose perturbation lies with those aforementioned onions—which these days seem to be arriving at the market the size of a rec-league softball:

So many recipes call for

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