How to Write Out a Recipe
/Writing out a recipe is a subtle art that is becoming increasingly lost in the abundance of recipes on the internet.
I should probably mention here that this post will be mainly talking about writing out a recipe, not developing a recipe.
It has never been easier to create and share recipes, thanks to the ease of the internet. You no longer have to publish a cookbook, or write out a recipe card by hand. This is an immensely wonderful thing, but with it comes an evolution of cooking and recipes that is not always for the better.
Some recipe creators have probably learned by osmosis; when you’ve read and made thousands of recipes, you can just write a recipe without too much thought and it will probably be a decently well written recipe, if not perfect. Others write recipes blissfully unaware that there are certain rules to be followed. It doesn’t mean their recipes are bad, it more means they aren’t sharing their recipe in an easy to read, easy to follow way.
If you have a mom or grandma who is a boomer, chances are they grew up learning how to cook and bake. My mom had a home-ec class in high school where they learned to cook, sew, etc. and it was one of her favorite classes! As women transitioned from being primarily homemakers to more and more having careers outside the home, cooking and baking, and teaching your kids to cook and bake, took a backseat. Then came the internet, and online recipes: food blogs, TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, and recipe sharing sites to make learning to cook easy, appealing, and accessible. Many people who did not grow up in the kitchen discovered just how rewarding cooking is. With so many novice cooks in the audience, recipe creators and sharers realized that each and every recipe has to be explained, with great detail in step by step directions. Something like that, anyway.
Along the way, we’ve lost some terminology, some techniques. Some are now outdated, some have disappeared more because they’re not well understood and it feels nicer to cut corners. With so many recipe creators out there now, sometimes it feels like anything goes. At the end of the day, if you are able to understand a recipe, it turns out, and it tastes good, that’s a win. I’m with Chef Gusteau when he says “Anyone can cook!” However, to preserve a tradition, an art form, you might find interesting the more correct formula to writing a recipe, as outlined below, and compare it to some of your favorite recipes.
It’s also important to note that while there are certain recipe rules, there are always exceptions, and some elements are optional, and yet others come down to style.
I believe if you’re going to do something, you should do it to the best that you can, and always willing to learn. I find things like writing recipe formulas intriguing. I’ve spent my whole life practically in the kitchen, and I’m still learning new things on the daily! I always want to know the why behind things. If you too are curious as to how a recipe should be written and why, keep reading! And no, all of my recipes I’ve written here on the blog are not perfect. In fact, I’m on here almost on the daily, fixing and improving all the recipes and content; stewarding my little corner of the internet, doing the best I can with what I have, and doing better when I know better.
To keep things neat and tidy, let’s just start with the title and work our way down, shall we? :)
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Title
Traditionally a title would be short and succinct, often named after the main ingredient or perhaps the inventor, sometimes with the method of preparation. Many recipes that are household recipes (you’ve probably heard of German Chocolate Cake) were originally created with a different name than we are familiar with now, and sometimes they slowly morph into the name they eventually become. With the age of keywords and trying to climb to the top of Google and Pinterest with SEO while also trying to make your recipe stand out, longer titles often rank, literally.
As a recipe creator, naming new recipes does not always come easily. It’s hard not to eye roll when you see the name of some recipes, and yet, it can be hard to come up with names that give an adequate representation of a recipe without getting too long. If you just baked up a quick bread with say, raspberries, almonds, and a Nutella swirl, what would you call it? Raspberry Almond Nutella Quick Bread? Too long, right? But if you call it just Nutella bread, that could be a number of other things. Just “raspberry bread” is also a bit vague. The title of a recipe should convey clearly what it is, but it doesn’t necessarily have to give away all of its secrets. I did have to laugh recently when I saw a classic recipe, but renamed with all of its ingredients in the title. Suddenly Shrimp Scampi was “Butter Lemon Garlic Shrimp Pasta”.
When naming a recipe, the ingredients should be listed in descending order by amount. If you make a quick bread with chocolate chips and orange zest, it should be named chocolate orange quick bread rather than orange chocolate quick bread, since there would be more chocolate chips in the recipe than orange zest.
Servings
After the title of the recipe should be how much it makes (i.e. 2 cups)/how many it makes (i.e. 24 cookies)/how many it serves (i.e. 6-8 servings).
Time
Also near the beginning should be how long it takes to execute the recipe from beginning to end. There should be a total time, and usually also a prep time and cook time, and optionally but very helpful, an inactive time. Prep would be how long it takes to prepare the dish. Cook is how long it takes to cook or bake. Inactive time is necessary time to complete a recipe that requires no hands on time. A good example of this would be the time it takes to let bread dough rise.
Something important to note is that the time given on a recipe is calculated based on how the ingredients are already listed. If a recipe calls for a carrot that is cleaned, peeled, and chopped, then that recipe does not include the time it takes to clean, peel, and chop the carrot. A recipe will only count the time it takes to do what the recipe directions explicitly tell you to do.
If you’ve ever wondered why it feels like it takes you longer to make recipes than the recipe states, this is probably why. I have never felt this is an accurate representation of recipe preparation time, so I do actually ignore this rule and include how long the whole recipe takes when I write recipes, no matter how I list my ingredients. All recipes on Jennyblogs are written to reflect a more accurate preparation time.
Author
The author of a recipe is usually listed towards the top also.
If the recipe has been adapted from someone else’s, due credit should be given.
Recipes are not able to be copyrighted, at least the ingredients. Anyone is free to share any recipe’s ingredients, however the directions should be rewritten in your own words. If someone copies and pastes word for word what another recipe author wrote out for the directions, that could be considered plagiarism. However, recipe sharing etiquette would have you give credit to the original author. I’ve read a general rule of thumb where if you change 3 ingredients or more in a recipe, that modified recipe could now be considered yours. I guess I subconsciously followed this rule before I knew it, but more conservatively so. The changes need to be pretty major for me to consider the recipe “my own”. If I know where the recipe came from, I always give credit, and not hidden away somewhere. It’s rare that I share an exact recipe, although there are a select few on Jennyblogs because they were just so good, and you can tell pretty easily by my credit if a recipe is simply “adapted” or if it’s significantly different but still “inspired by” so and so. Essentially, recipe sharing and can be a gray area, but I think that if you follow the golden rule “treat others as you wish to be treated” you will do well.
Equipment
Another more recent addition to recipes is stating what equipment you will need. This is more suited to blogs and websites where you have endless space to write (oh yes, don’t we know it with us bloggers’ rambling backstories!) and can list what equipment you will need. Old fashioned recipe cards never listed equipment, no room on the card and I’m guessing everyone had about the same equipment anyway!
Ingredients
Ingredients should be listed in the order that they are called for in the recipe directions.
Use subcategories where appropriate. For a cake recipe, you might write “For the Cake” followed by ingredients for the cake, then “For the Frosting” followed by ingredients for the frosting.
When an ingredient is used more than once in a recipe, it should be listed just once under each subcategory, followed by divided. For example, if you’re making a cake and the recipe calls for beating 1 cup sugar with butter, then whipping egg whites with 3/4 cup sugar, the ingredients would be listed as 1 3/4 cups sugar, divided. The directions would then specify how much of the sugar would be needed for the first use: “beat 1 cup sugar with butter”; then for the second use: “beat egg whites with remaining sugar.”
Ingredients with simple advance preparation should be listed as they will be used in the recipe. If a recipe calls for butter and it needs to be soft so that it can be beaten with sugar, it should be listed as “butter, softened”. Otherwise, the instructions will need to include how to get said ingredient to desired state, such as, “leave butter out on countertop until softened” but that’s a bore. We don’t want that. Keep recipes as concise as possible.
The wording of the advance preparation of an ingredient matters. “1 cup strawberries, sliced” means you measure first, slice second. “1 cup sliced strawberries” means you slice first, measure second.
Measurements in the ingredients can and should be listed with appropriate abbreviations. Tablespoon doesn’t need to be written out, you can save time by simply writing Tbsp. Some common abbreviations are:
Teaspoon - tsp
Tablespoon - Tbsp (also tbsp, Tbs, TB, T are all also used)
Ounce - oz
Pound - lb
Gram- g
Kilogram - kg
Milliliter - ml
Liter - L
Inch - in
Centimeter - cm
It’s funny because years ago when I was first writing out recipes and looking into recipe writing etiquette, I read that you should always abbreviate measurements, as just mentioned. Since this is also how my mom was taught and thus taught me, I had no reason to question it. However I’ve also more recently read the complete contradiction to this; measurements should be written out. Pound, ounce, teaspoon. etc. I politely disagree, but if I’m wrong I will come back and change this. :) My thinking is, if abbreviations for tsp and Tbsp and such exist and are well known, but aren’t meant to be used in recipes, when else would you use them, if not in a recipe?
Numbers are numbers and shouldn’t be written out (1, not one), and fractions are used rather than decimals.
If an ingredient starts with a letter and not a number, the first letter should be capitalized.
Use generic ingredient names rather than brand names, unless a brand name is specifically needed to achieve a certain result.
Directions
The first step in any recipe is usually to preheat the oven.
While there is nothing wrong with this standard way, I alter the wording on this slightly for all my recipes. I got tired of making recipe after recipe, turning on my oven right at step 1 as instructed, only to have it preheat within minutes long before I was ready to use it. When I write out recipes I tend to simply use “Oven 400F / 205C” right at the top of the directions. This way it is not technically a step, so that the recipe preparer can turn their oven on at their discretion, knowing best how quickly or slowly their oven preheats, and how long it may take them to prepare the recipe (more or less time than recipe indicates).
Directions should be clear, but concise. Full sentences aren’t needed. Recipes over time have gotten wordier, with many a blog writing recipes like they’re talking to friends. I like the friendliness of it, but if you’re not careful, can take a clean and concise recipe into a lengthy, sprawling, and more difficult to read recipe.
Each step should consist of the ingredients needed, what kind of container/utensil needed, cooking heat, etc., where applicable.
Use multiple senses where possible to cue reader into the correct way to do things. How things should look, feel, taste, etc.
Avoid using excess use of the word “the”. Instead of writing out “beat the butter and the sugar” you can write “beat butter and sugar”.
2 Numbers together should be offset with a dash or parentheses. If a recipe calls for a 14 oz can of coconut milk, you ‘d want to write “1 - 14oz” or “1 (14oz) can of coconut milk”.
Recipes should be written for someone with basic kitchen knowledge. Recipes become too long if a recipe needs to include how to fold whipped cream into the batter, not to pack flour into a measuring cup, or how to dice an onion. This is basic terminology that should already be somewhat familiar before diving in and trying to bake or cook. Just as it’s helpful to learn some basic terminology for any skill before starting, the same applies to working in the kitchen. The beauty of recipes on the internet is that while the recipe can be clear and concise on the “recipe card”, bloggers have as much space as they wish, usually before getting to the recipe card, to explain the steps and ingredients in the recipe in detail. This is helpful for those that are new to cooking or even certain kinds of recipes, not as fun for those who already know the purpose and importance of baking soda in the recipe. This is where food blogs often get bad raps, because you have to scroll so far before ever finding the recipe hiding amidst the verbiage.
Storage
At the end of the recipe comes the storage of the dish, where applicable: if it can be stored at room temperature, fridge, freezer, etc. covered, uncovered, etc.
Nutritional Information
Many recipe cards can easily calculate the nutritional information by taking the amount of each ingredient listed and dividing it by the number of servings. This is new and a nice feature. The con is that it’s approximate.
After having read all this, you might be like me and be tempted to go rewrite some of your saved recipes to be more streamlined, and sometimes, more “correct”. My mom and I do this all the time, especially when we want to print recipes or refer to them often!
