How to Write a Recipe: The Silent Disaster that is Modern Food Media
/Recipes used to be so simple: An easy-to-follow step-by-step guide on how to make a dish, and get it tasting how it’s supposed to. Sure there were two dozen steps or more, but most of those were along the lines of “bake for 35 minutes” or “cut carrots”. Modern “recipes” have taken a…different approach. Here’s a whole “single step” from a recipe I’ve found online, and it’s far from the exception:
Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large, deep frypan over medium heat. Add onion and carrot, then cook, stirring, for 3-4 minutes until soft. Add the garlic and ginger, then cook for a further 2 minutes or until fragrant. Add the mince and cook, breaking up lumps with a wooden spoon, for 5-6 minutes until browned. Stir in the curry powder, curry leaves, raisins and almonds, then cook for 2 minutes. Stir in the chutney, beef stock, lemon juice and breadcrumb mixture. Season, bring to a simmer, then divide mixture among four 2-cup (500ml) ovenproof dishes. Cover with foil and bake for 25-30 minutes.
There’s so much going on here, mainly the fact that there’s way too much going on here! This is one step? There are at least nine separate actions here. How does that constitute one step in a recipe? These aren’t supposed to be short stories, they’re meant to be quickly-skimmable guides. Bunching everything up like this makes it difficult to look away, do something, and look back without losing your place. The only thing worse than writing a recipe this way would be to throw everything into one paragraph - but not by much.
As far as I’m concerned, there are four unbreakable rules to writing a recipe, and one optional one. The unbreakable rules are as follows: One action per step, begin each step with a verb (a doing word), each step must be numbered, and each step much be on it’s own line. Optionally, you may want to eliminate all but the necessary words from each step so it reads more like mongo-English than a full sentence: “Beat the eggs” and “preheat the oven to 180 degrees” become “beat eggs” and “preheat oven 180 degrees”. I prefer a middle ground: “To” is permitted, but “the” is not.
So many recipes mess up on one, many, or all of the unbreakable rules. What’s even going on? Getting it right on three out of four may not sound so bad, until you realise how dead-simple these rules are. How hard is it to separate your paragraph of actions into a numbered list??
A recipe is, ideally, a piece of text guiding someone through a process. This is why every step should begin with a doing word - you’re being told how to do something! “Chop the celery” and “pour the mixture”, not “when you’ve done that think about checking on your souffle”! Keep it to the point! Numbered steps on their own separate line make it easy to glance between the recipe and the food without losing your place, and keeping each step limited to a single action makes it as simple as possible for even a novice to follow along and be confident in what they’re doing. I don’t know why cooking-related magazines, websites, and books are doing this. Is it a marketing thing? Do they thing they will scare people off with a sixteen or thirty step recipe? I’ll tell you what would scare me off even more: A giant wall of text!
As you might guess, I do not recommend following directly from a book or website while cooking. I prefer writing it out myself in MS Word and printing it out for following along during the actual cooking process. My simple rules make it easy to turn any food-based short story into a recipe designed to be followed by an actual human being. You don’t even have to be the editor of a magazine and website to do it! In fact, here’s the revised version of that “single step” from earlier:
Heat the oil in a large, deep frypan over medium heat
Add onion and carrot
Cook, stirring, for 3-4 minutes until soft
Add the garlic and ginger
Cook for a further 2 minutes or until fragrant
Add the mince and cook, breaking up lumps with a wooden spoon, for 5-6 minutes until browned
Stir in the curry powder, curry leaves, raisins and almonds
Cook for 2 minutes
Stir in the chutney, beef stock, lemon juice and breadcrumb mixture
Season, bring to a simmer, then divide mixture among four 2-cup (500ml) ovenproof dishes
Cover with foil
Bake for 25-30 minutes
How much easier is that to read and follow along? No-one would have any problem glancing at that, performing a step, and quickly glancing back again without having lost their place. Sure, there are twelve steps where there was previously “one”, but no reasonable person would complain that it is now more complicated than it was before, and no reasonable person would be dissuaded by the number of steps after taking the time to read them. If you’re actually dissuaded by a 12 step process, seeing as a few of them are just “cook” or “bake”, then I suggest that cooking is not for you. Nothing more can be done. Sorry.
As an aside, I’m glad that we’re coming to the end of the “write three paragraphs of meaningless drivel before showing the recipe” phase of food websites. They probably wanted to seem more professional while also pandering to search engine algorithms, but wasting your users’ time doesn’t count as ‘professionalism’, and also, god damn, could they not just put that useless garbage below the recipe where no-one will read it? It’s not as if anyone does anything but angrily scroll past it anyway.
Okay, I think we actually did some good here today. We learned how to write a recipe, we learned what not to do, and why. These are skills most people learn by the age of 10, but that isn’t important. Here’s a recap on how to write an effective recipe:
Steps must be numbered
Limit each step to one single action
Every step must have it’s own line
Begin each line with a verb (action word)
