Recipes

Well-written recipes will be cherished for generations.

If you can read,
you can cook.
—Betty Welsbacher

Every family has stories about recipes or about cooking something that turned out (insert your ending here). I have several, as I suspect you do; two come to mind, with two different endings.

My birth family story, from my childhood, involves a famed Thanksgiving pumpkin pie made with salt instead of sugar—oy! My adult chosen family story involves a cabin with limited provisions on hand and a friend who made out of them a pizza, complete with crust, from her memory of what probably went into the recipe. It was a miracle to me then, but looking back on that occasion now, I can fathom how it might be possible, at least for one or two dishes I make all the time.

But me, I’m not comfortable with improv. I still use recipes.

The actual trade of creating and writing down recipes is a complex one. It involves test kitchens and legalities and people with expertise in chemistry. (If you have not read Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry, please stop reading this newsletter, go to your local library or bookstore, obtain a copy, and cancel your plans for the day.)

This newsletter entry is not about all that. If you want to write a book or start a serious blog or engage otherwise in a professional, commercial, recipe-related endeavor, seek out proper training. (You can start here.)

I’m not giving legal advice, just common sense—you don’t want somebody from General Mills with initials after his name going after you about copyright violoations.  

But if your friends have asked you for your recipe, or you want to commemorate for future generations the kitchen artistry of a beloved relative (say, for example, your mother, in time for Mother’s Day, which—oh look! is coming right up!), guidelines about formatting, content, and consistency can help you do so.

I’m learning about this along with you, because the only recipes I’ve ever written down were copied from books or narrated to me.

Narrated. OK, one more story. In the 1980s or early ’90s, my Aunt Jane made us a scrumptious vegetarian lasagna involving pine nuts, during one of those eras when pine nuts were hot property. She called it Yuppy Lasagna. It was so delicious that when I got back home I called her and asked for the recipe.

OK, she said, and reeled off a long list of ingredients as I scribbled, trying to keep up. She took a breath and then continued: So. That was the sauce. Now for the actual lasagna—

At which point I interrupted and said, Never mind; my recipe for this dish is Aunt Jane Makes It.

So, anyway, I am learning all this along with you. I knew that recipe writing had rules, which I’ve seen broken from time to time in this era of gatekeeper-free media. (Have you ever gotten to the end of a recipe and realized that you have an ingredient left over? Or that you’re supposed to add something that wasn’t listed?) But I didn’t know, until I looked this up, that recipes officially come in three formats: standard, active, and narrative.

The second and third, it turns out, take up more space and require you to dig through blocks of text to find the ingredients and directions you need, so we will ignore them. The first is the version you’ve probably seen, in which ingredients are listed first, and then directions on what to do with them follow. It’s the version most recipes use. It’s the version discussed below.

Keep sentences short. Be consistent—with verbs, formatting, measurements, directions. You might want to jot down your own “stylesheet” before starting; I guarantee you it will grow as you proceed. Decide, for example, if you are going to use single-letter Ts for “teaspoon” and “tablespoon” (a lowercase t with a period and an uppercase T without a period, respectively) or the abbreviations for each: tsp. and tbsp. Or, for that matter, if you want to spell out measurements, which at least one resource I viewed advises.

I disagree. The writers of this site’s article are food experts; I am not. But besides being an editor, I am someone who reads recipes and likes lists with items that fit succinctly on one line for easy viewing. You decide who to listen to.

Use terms that will be understood by somebody who has never cracked a cookbook or even cooked. As illustrated in the advice on this site, write “simmer, covered” instead of “braise” or “cut into 1⁄8- to 1/4-inch cubes” instead of “dice.” (But see there, again with the spelled-out word; I’d use “in.” rather than “inch.”) (Here we will close up the copy-editing rabbithole I am dangerously close to falling into.)

Here’s a roadmap, start to finish, borrowed from the same site. Write a title: short, clever if you must. My friend Laurie gave us a recipe with a title that does not lie. It was “Easy Bean Soup.” That title says it all; all three of those words are 100 percent true. However, since that recipe is going nowhere except my kitchen cupboard with a handwritten note on it that reads “Num!”, I have rechristened it Laurie’s Soup. If I were writing a recipe book, I would use the name it was born with. But in my cupboard, I have a lot of recipes involving beans, soup, and easy. The new name will remind me immediately which one this is.

List ingredients and directions in the order in which they will be used and followed. Note pre-cooking steps first, i.e. “Preheat oven to 350 degrees.” If one ingredient will be used more than once, for example a quantity of broth or oil (“4 tablespoons plus 2 tablespoons” or “6 tablespoons, divided”), note that. Use everyday words for units: “1 (10-ounce) bag baby spinach.” Use subheadings for complicated recipes like my Aunt Jane’s Yuppie dish: “Sauce” and “Lasagna.” And use generic names, not brand names.

Be clear about those ingredients—spices, for example: fresh or dried? (Big difference in potency.) Is it an uncommon ingredient? Consider suggesting an alternative.

Describe times, temperatures, equipment types, and terms with as much description and specificity as possible: “10-inch, non-stick skillet”; “remove from heat and set aside”; “toss” or “beat” (not  “add”), “coarsely chop” or “mince” (not “cut”).

Note safety techniques, especially with non-plant food items; you don’t want your loved ones running to bathroom or, worse, the hospital because they ate undercooked meat. And consider helpful guides such as “consistency should be thick, not runny.”

On this site, you can find visual aids and additional details on the suggestions above. A majority of the site’s content extends beyond this issue’s focus on content, offering detailed, technical advice on how to get your recipes online, out there, and noticed.

I can’t advise about SEOs and other fancy online stuff or how to make a career out of writing recipes, but I’ll put down money that for most Moms, a packet of handwritten family recipes bound up and wrapped with a bow will beat out flowers and chocolates any day.

Well, maybe not the chocolates.

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Lagniappe: Women Who Cook certainly did. Happy Mother’s Day.