Gourmet Slips on Oil in Cookie Recipe : Publishing: The magazine warns readers that wintergreen oil, an ingredient it listed, could be unsafe. But it says no one has reported trouble.

Keep your hands out of the cookie jar--if it holds Aunt Vertie’s sugar cookies.

Gourmet magazine sent 750,000 letters to subscribers last week because a recipe in its July issue called for wintergreen oil.

Wintergreen oil is used to ease sore muscles and should not be ingested. The recipe should have called for wintergreen extract, Melissa Small, an assistant editor at the magazine, said Monday.

“We thought we should inform our readers of this. Some people can be allergic to it,” Small said.

In her original recipe, writer Helen Gustafson had called for wintergreen extract. The mint flavoring, she wrote, made “Aunt Vertie’s sugar cookies” terrific with lemonade.

Gustafson “grew up in Midwest, and extract is more available there,” Small said. “It’s hard to get extract here, and we substituted wintergreen oil.”

All recipes are tested in kitchens at the magazine. Gourmet employees ate the cookies, and no trouble resulted, Small said.

But after publication, a reader who bought wintergreen oil from her pharmacist learned it should not be eaten and mailed the label to the magazine.

No warning label appeared on the wintergreen oil bought at a pharmacy in New York for the recipe testing, Small said.

A standard chemical reference, the Merck Index, says wintergreen oil causes nausea, vomiting and convulsions and can be fatal.

But Jay Young, an independent chemical safety consultant in Silver Spring, Md., said the amount called for in the recipe is so small that “it’s extremely unlikely we’re going to see any death if someone doesn’t get the word.”

Wintergreen extract is not toxic, he said, because the solution is so diluted.

Gourmet’s letters “urge” readers to immediately “block out the reference to ‘ 1/4 teaspoon wintergreen oil (available at some pharmacies),’ ” to make sure no one uses the oil.

They include a sticker of the corrected recipe and suggest that they be pasted over the original. The recipe originally suggested vanilla or almond extract could be substituted for wintergreen, but Gustafson noted, “the taste is less sensational.”

The magazine has not heard about any problems resulting from the error, Small said.

Notices of the recipe correction will run in the September and October issues, she said.