Recipe Writing with Real Cooks in Mind

Can you blunder-proof your recipes?

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I still remember the moment I recognized the weight of responsibility that comes with writing recipes for publication. I was getting a bit of traction as a freelancer, having pitched and landed a few magazine features with recipes, but not nearly enough to even consider leaving my full-time teaching job. One day, a student, just back from visiting family, rushed over to tell me that his mother had made my Mussels Stuffed with Parmesan and Spinach for a party she hosted. It’s embarrassing now to remember the naivete of my reaction, but I was dumbfounded to learn that a stranger had cooked one of my recipes. Before this moment, I had been so exhilarated at the prospect of getting a byline that I hadn’t really considered the endgame. But that all shifted when I learned that I had a connection to the end user. What if the recipe fell short? What if my student’s mother had invested her time planning, shopping, cooking, spent money on ingredients, gone to the trouble of inviting people over, and been subject to the distress of a kitchen failure?

Now, in this instance, my recipe had appeared in a national publication¹ with a reputation for its rigorous text kitchen protocol and strict editorial standards, so I was set up for success. But my reaction has never left me. Anytime I work on a recipe, I remind myself that the ultimate goal is not getting published, it’s writing recipes with the end-user in mind, recipes that readers can follow without stress or confusion, recipes that will help cooks gain confidence in their own kitchens.

One of my earliest bylines in Fine Cooking magazine, 1996

In last week’s re-run episode, Recipe Writing with Real Cooks in Mind, Kate Leahy, Kristin Donnelly, and I talk about strategies for writing cookbooks filled with recipes that meet this goal. Of course, recipe development and testing are the first steps, but even the most diligently tested recipe can fail if not presented clearly. We start our conversation with a big-picture look at how a book’s overall organization (everything from table of contents to recipe title style) can impact its usability, before zeroing in on the nitty-gritty of recipe structure, and here’s where things can get interesting.

In thinking about user-focused recipe writing, I often recall our conversation with Bee Wilson back in Episode 93 about the possibility that all recipes, no matter how well written, are filled with assumptions and gaps of information. In her thought-provoking essay, All Recipes are Incomplete², Bee explains that nothing in cooking is obvious to new cooks. Even the simplest recipe can be baffling, packed with language, equipment, and techniques that only become obvious with repetition and experience.

The crux of the problem is that we, as authors, can’t know what will trip up a reader, nor can we fully remember what it was like to cook a dish for the first time. What’s obvious to one cook may be completely novel to another, but it would be impossible, not to mention impractical, to write for every contingency. So what’s a recipe writer to do?

There is, of course, no one answer, but here are a few best practices that lead to user-friendly recipes:

• Know your audience and write to their level. Keep your intended reader in mind as you write. Imagine them in their kitchen, following your recipe. Are you providing the right information at the right time?

• Set expectations. Providing an accurate description of the intended outcome of individual steps will help a reader know where they’re headed. Should the soup be thick or light and brothy? How brown should the top of the gratin be?

• Consistency in writing style and clarity of instructions. Are onions chopped in one recipe and coarsely chopped in another, and if so, what’s the difference? Are you calling for low-sodium broth in one recipe, but just broth in another, and does it matter?

A great tip for improving your recipe writing is to spend time in the kitchen with an inexperienced cook while they follow a recipe. Take note of how they interpret and execute each step. Watch for moments of confusion or blunders, and consider ways these could have been avoided. Another invaluable exercise is to study the recipe format and language in your favorite books. And of course, tune in to Everything Cookbooks for more guidance on all things cookbook-related.

Links from the episode:

• Episode 91: The UX of Cookbook Design

• Episode 28: All About Headnotes

• Episode 42: How to Write Recipe Titles

• Episode 24: Genius Recipes with Kristin Miglore

• Episode 59: Lerato Umah-Shaylor on Africana

• Episode 33: Becoming the Writer You Want to Be with Andy Baraghani

• Episode 93: The Secret of Cooking with Bee Wilson

• Episode 88: On Being a First-Time Cookbook Author with Michelle Braxton

• Genius Recipes by Kristin Miglore

• Brooks Headley’s Fancy Desserts by Brooks Headley

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Next week on EVCB:

And we’re back!!! Season 9 kicks off with an all-host chat on cookbook introductions and front matter. We hope you’ll tune in, and until then, keep on writing, reading, and cooking. ✍️📚🍳

Molly and the EVCB crew

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1. Fine Cooking magazine, published from 1994 to 2022.

2. The essay appears in Bee Wilson’s wonderful book, The Secret of Cooking.