AUSTIN, Texas — Representatives of the nation’s recipe blogs gathered Tuesday behind a podium made of two stacked cookbooks to acknowledge that the phrase “Prep Time: 10 Minutes” was written by someone who had already chopped everything.

“We want to be transparent,” said Dana Whitcombe-Ruiz, spokesperson for the Coalition of Food Blogs With Very Warm Lighting. “Ten minutes assumes the onion is diced, the garlic is minced, the butter is at ‘room temperature,’ and the cook has no children, no phone, and no history of crying at onions.”

The admission followed a months-long internal review that found the average listed prep time was off by a factor of 4.7, with a margin of error of “however long it takes you to find the zester.”

Dr. Alistair Pennywhistle, senior fellow in Mise en Place Epistemology at the Institute for Honest Shallots, said the problem is structural. “The number on the page was measured in a studio kitchen by a professional who had peeled forty carrots the night before,” he said. “It does not account for the human being who has to locate a second cutting board, then wash the first one.”

Coalition members also confessed that “1 medium onion, diced” has never once corresponded to an onion of medium size, and that “cook until golden” is a unit of time roughly equal to “until you stop believing in it.”

The conference was interrupted at 11:42 a.m. when a visiting blogger began reading aloud from a 40-paragraph introduction about her grandmother’s farmhouse, the particular way the screen door sounded in August, and a road trip in 2009 that “changed everything about how I think about zucchini.” Attendees reported that the recipe itself, a three-ingredient lemon bar, had not yet been mentioned.

Event staff declared the anecdote a hostage situation at paragraph 23.

“We have a negotiator on site,” said Lt. Corinne Abernathy-Fitch of the Regional Scroll Crisis Unit, speaking from behind a laptop. “Our objective is to reach the ingredient list. Early indications are that it is somewhere below a pop-up asking us to subscribe, but above 14 ads for a mattress.”

Negotiators attempted to hit the “Jump to Recipe” button but found it had been replaced with a button reading “Jump to Memories.” Efforts continued as the blogger revealed that her grandmother “never measured anything, she just knew.”

“That’s a red flag,” Abernathy-Fitch said. “If the recipe calls for ‘a little of this,’ we’re looking at a long night.”

“Ten minutes assumes the onion is already diced, the garlic is minced, and the cook has no history of crying at onions.”

By press time, the situation was resolved when a bystander scrolled past the 31st paragraph, discovering that the lemon bars required one hour of chilling, a second hour of cooling, and “a little patience.” The blogger was released unharmed, though she asked to be reminded to mention her sourdough starter.

The Coalition pledged to revise all prep times to reflect reality, beginning with a new standard label: “Prep Time: Yes.”

Home cooks responded cautiously. “I’d like to believe them,” said Tom Gallagher-Voss, 38, standing in his kitchen at 9:15 p.m. with a timer reading 1:52 and a bag of unpeeled potatoes. “But I’ve been told the oven preheats in five minutes before.”