There's a restaurant in New London, New Hampshire, called Peter Christian's. It's been there since 1973, and I used to eat a lot there as a youngster. A long while back, they put out a cookbook, and one of the recipes was for their beef stew. Unfortunately, they obviously didn't put the actual recipe, or a well-tested copy, because the taste was much different from the restaurant version. So, for decades, I've been making every once in a long while, tweaking it to make it taste more like the real thing.
I made it tonight, but I decided to go off script, instead of trying to match the original, and failing, yet again. I added things that were never in the original, including some things that didn't even exist at the time (at least in New Hampshire). And I have to say that tonight's version was actually very good.
Moral of the story: sometimes taking a step back can make you feel better about those bastards not offering the real recipes in the cookbook that was supposed to be offering the real recipes.