Provide misleading accounts of article in culinary publications (4,3,5)
I believe the answer is:
cook the books
'provide misleading accounts' is the definition.
I don't know anything about this answer so I cannot judge whether it can be defined by this definition.
'article in culinary publications' is the wordplay.
'article' becomes 'the' (the definite article).
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'culinary' becomes 'cook' (I can't explain this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'publications' becomes 'books' (book is a kind of publication).
'cook'+'books'='cookbooks'
'the' placed within 'cookbooks' is 'COOK THE BOOKS'.
'of' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for cook the books that I've seen before include "Falsify accounts" , "Be fiddling" , "Make fraudulent entries in business accounts" .)