This article may be published freely, in print and online, as long as
byline and resource box at end are included as written. Thank you.Writing Recipe (c)2003 Pam White
It sounds simple. Sell your family recipes for money. Gather up your community's traditional dishes and submit them to magazines. List meals you make for guests and slap together a cookbook. Right?
Wrong.
Writing down recipes is an art, and one that keeps reinventing itself.
I have a wonderful cookbook - "The Home Queen Cookbook" - that is packed with recipes submitted by wives of governor's, senator's, famous businessmen, and other notables. This book was published in late 1800's, after Fannie Merritt Farmer's Boston Cooking School cookbook was published, but those fine home queens' submissions are less than standard in their presentation.
Sponge Cake - "Ten eggs, weight of 8 in sugar and four in flour, flavor with lemon, add a pinch of salt." That is entire recipe and while seasoned cooks might be able to understand what is meant, and professional chefs sympathetic to simple notes made for memory's sake, new cooks would be stumped by this listing of ingredients.
Write simply, but not as simply as Home Queens did. Remember that omissions or mistakes are disastrous to cook using your recipe, and will also hurt your reputation with editors. Think about how you felt first time a "friend" shared a fantastic recipe with you but left out one or two of ingredients so your version would never be as good as hers or his. If you've never been victim of a recipe-otomy then your friends are true. If you have, you have my sympathy.
We all have our own way of creating dishes – after family traditions, borrowing from this cooking show or that classic cookbook. Sometimes dishes are created out of necessity – quickie dinners, no-time-to-shop meals that use up stuff you have on hand, or ways to use up garden surplus. Personally, I dream of cakes and pastries, cassoulets and frittatas. My original recipes come from those late night, subconscious feasts.
We scribble notes on napkins, in journals or keep them inside our head.
It's time to get organized. Dedicate an entire notebook to recipe development, or buy a recipe box and fill it with note cards on which you've written your recipes and notes about your results (including comments from your resident taste-testers.) You're going to need these notes and recipes on hand when you find a new market to submit to.
Standardize - When writing a recipe, list ingredients in order they appear in preparation. Write out measurements to avoid any confusing abbreviations. When writing for internet or non-American publications consider using both metric and non-metric measurements, or providing a conversion rate. If you don't, it means an extra step for your reader to look on a conversion chart, or even flat cakes or rock hard muffins.
Most recipes list ingredients in one of two ways. If you are using herbs, onions, or eggs, for example, you might list "one-quarter cup basil, washed and chopped," "one Vidalia onion, sliced and sauteed," or "four eggs, beaten." Alternatively, you could list ingredients and discuss preparation in how-to part of recipe, i.e., one-quarter cup basil, one Vidalia onion, four eggs. When using frozen or canned food, list size of can or package.
Tools Needed - Unless you are writing recipes for an article or a cookbook on slow cookery, or stoneware pans, then you'll want to list special tools, pans, or appliances that will be needed to prepare each recipe. If recipe is for a chocolate, chocolate chip quick bread, one way to write this part of recipe is "lightly butter a 9" by 3 " loaf pan or muffin tins if you are making muffins."
