Best-selling cookbooks may not be a good source for learning to prepare meals after all.

Researchers found that most cookbooks neglect to teach readers about food-safety risks, and when they do, the information is often inaccurate. The new study conducted at North Carolina State University determined that 99.7 percent of recipes did not offer reliable ways to reduce the risk of food poisoning.

“Cookbooks aren’t widely viewed as a primary source of food-safety information, but cookbook sales are strong and they’re intended to be instructional,” researcher Ben Chapman said in a release.

The study published in the British Food Journal reviewed 1,497 recipes from cookbooks on the New York Times best-sellers list. Only 123 recipes, or 8 percent, specified what temperature to cook the dish, and not all of these instructions were safe.

“In other words, very few recipes provided relevant food-safety information, and 34 of those 123 recipes gave readers information that wasn’t safe,” Chapman said “Put another way, only 89 out of 1,497 recipes gave readers reliable information that they could use to reduce their risk of food-borne illness.”

Researchers said most recipes included vague directions about how to cook the dish, such as “cook until done,” while others wrongly focused on cooking time for a recipe.

“Cooking time is particularly unreliable, because so many factors can affect how long it takes to cook something: the size of the dish being cooked, how cold it was before going into the oven, differences in cooking equipment, and so on,” researcher Katrina Levine said.

Researchers suggested that cookbooks improve their recipes by establishing safer cooking temperatures.

“This is important because cooking meat, poultry, seafood and eggs to a safe internal temperature kills off pathogens that cause food-borne illness,” Levine said.