Outrage over recipe's 'black people' typo

An Australian publisher has been forced to reprint thousands of cookery books after a pasta recipe calling for "salt and freshly ground black people" prompted outrage.

Bob Sessions, Penguin Group Australia's head of publishing, acknowledged the proofreader for the Pasta Bible should have picked up the error, but said it was nothing more than a "silly mistake".

The Pasta Bible recipe for spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto was supposed to call for black pepper.

"We're mortified that this has become an issue of any kind and why anyone would be offended, we don't know," he told The Sydney Morning Herald.

"We've said to bookstores that if anyone is small-minded enough to complain about this... silly mistake, we will happily replace (the book) for them."

Penguin has said it would reprint 7,000 books, at a cost of £12,000, but books already in stores would not be recalled because doing so would be "extremely hard," Mr Sessions said.