How to format a recipe

I’ve spent days of my life formatting recipes. Between working on Canned Peaches, working under chefs as a beleaguered prep cook, working as a baker & pastry cook, and also as a head chef needing to communicate with employees – I’ve seen hundreds of recipes written hundreds of different ways. I’ve settled on what I think is the easiest way to communicate a recipe. And, ta daaaaaa, here it is.

Now, you’ll notice that this is NOT how recipes are written on the Canned Peaches website. For this website, I wanted to pick a really accessible format that people already feel familiar with (also, search engine friendly, because I WANT THE WORLD TO SEE THEM).

The format I’m about to show you is the next level: it’s for people who have a lot of no-nonsense recipes that get used and shared frequently. And my wager here is that if you’re the kind of person who’d click on a stale-bait link called “How to format a recipe”, you’re the kind of person who is ready for the next level.

And as with so many things, the next level is really quite simple. But first, let’s ask:

What makes a well-written recipe?

I must admit, I feel a tingle of excitement when I receive a cryptic recipe. It’s fun for me to untangle a twisted web of culinary history.

However, when I scan a recipe book, I have different things I look for to tell if the recipe is well-written. For most published cookbooks, they’re intended for a wide audience, so they might be a great recipe, but they’re not necessarily the most functional recipe.

There’s a lot of power in a functional recipe – they are what I call a workhorse recipe. I like workhorse recipes, and I love converting delicious pony recipes into a recipe that can really pull it’s weight around the farm. (Weird. Weird analogy.)

Here’s what I want:

It needs to be easy to scale.

“Scale” is cook-talk for “measure.” You’ll hear it a lot in bakeries, where scales, the physical object, are being used for every single recipe, but it’s also used on the savory/culinary side. A recipe should be formatted to where you can easily see how much of each ingredient needs to be measured out, and in easy to read formats that are preferably uniform. The best recipes are all in one unit, be it grams, ounces, or volume measurements (like cups and tablespoons.)

A recipe that’s easy to scale is fast to make. Bam.

It needs to be easy to make different batch sizes.

The best recipes already have different batch sizes written in, which is easy to do in a table format – and I’ll show you what that looks like below. But even if you don’t do that, having space plotted out on your recipe to write down a different batch size is a great idea.

It’s also really smart to write down what your standard batch size is, and how much it yields.

It has helpful (and tidy) notes.

When you work with a recipe a lot, you start to figure out different tips and tricks that make it work. Hopefully, you make note of those things immediately, and hopefully you do so in a neat and tidy fashion (but of course, most chefs scrawl things across recipes. You can only do so much.)

Great notes to make: yields, pan sizes, equipment to use (blender vs. food processor, chinois vs. china cap), if something needs parchment under it, if an ingredient burns easily, temperatures, if something needs to get cut to a particular size…I could go on. But I won’t. Write down anything and everything that has helped you in the present, and it will be helpful to future you, or maybe, someday, your grandchildren who are trying to recreate your recipe.

Put it in a table

You’ve heard of Farm to Table, but have you heard of Table to Table?

That’s a really great joke, and I stand by it.

I like to use a table for ALL my recipes. You’ll see bakers use tables a lot, but I think they work wonderfully for savory recipes as well. And to prove this, here is my recipe for French Onion Soup.

It’s very simple: open up a word processor (or better yet, use Google Docs! Have everything everywhere!). Insert a table with at least 4 columns, and as many rows as you have ingredients. Put the ingredients in the first column, vertical, descending. BUT leave the top left field blank, and make the top rows your different batch sizes, moving horizontally.

“1x” means a one-times batch, and I recommend calling whatever is your “standard batch” a 1x.

However, if you know you always double your cornbread recipe, it might be worthwhile writing down your 1x measurements AND your 2x measurements, and writing in the notes “2x is standard batch size” or “2x yields 8×12 pan of cornbread.” That way, you know how much you normally make, but you also have the original recipe, and that might help you with math for other batch sizes later.

I’ve come to LOVE tables because I can easily scan ingredients, amounts, OR just look at the instructions. I know exactly where to look and what to look for.

And I didn’t in the above recipe, but I almost always like to leave a blank column or two so if I ever need to add a batch size, I can do the math and add it to the column. I only ever like doing math for a recipe once. It drives me nuts when I go to make a 3x batch of my dulce de leche mousse, and realize that once again I have to perform mathematical incantations to figure out my amounts. I want to do things fast! I want them done! I don’t want to take forever figuring out my recipe – there’s valuable sitting time to be had and I want to have it.

List your ingredients in order of their use

This is such a great practice. It helps curb confusion for the cook. Also, in a world where so many people are cooking off their phones and tablets, it really helps you keep track of where you’re at as you’re closing and opening screens over and over again (or asking your friend what their passcode is).

Here’s my recipe for Apple Pie filling:

In this recipe, it’s important to not add certain ingredients until a certain point. See, for this filling to turn out right, first the apples have to macerate, then they have to cook, and then the corn starch can be added.

By listing the ingredients in order in the table, that helps a cook keep track of what they’re doing. It’s much easier to look at a table then the blobs of text.

Most recipes already do this, but it takes a certain amount of diligence when you’re writing down your recipe. Double check yourself, and make it so.

Leave a breadcrumb trail, i.e. cite your sources

My bachelor’s degree in literature is sitting dusty on a metaphorical shelf somewhere, and on that shelf, it’s heart just skipped a beat.

Did a chef just request people to *cite their sources*??? It gasps, while it’s heart rate soars. My work here is done.

And with that, it packed it’s gunny-sack and walked into the sunset, briefly stopping along the way to identify common 2nd-wave feminist tropes and wag it’s finger at independent clauses beginning with “And”.

Hopefully you noticed on that Apple Pie Filling above that I wrote Adapted from Bravetart next to the title. Bravetart is a contemporary classic cookbook of American baking by the amazing Stella Parks. I can’t recommend it more highly. My apple pie filling stemmed from her recipe, which is a wonderful recipe – I just had to make some changes to make it bake up properly in a strange & quirky convection oven I was using.

Always give credit where credit is due, and hopefully, the people you are crediting are doing the same. This isn’t just for history’s sake (though, as a baby budding food historian, I very much appreciate it), it also helps problem-solve any errors that might come up by looking back at the original source.

Also, I think it’s of the essence to remember that recipes do NOT exist in a vacuum. Our consumption of food is a dynamic process that is far bigger than any one of us. By all means, be proud of yourself when you finally nail down your best sourdough recipe – but you never can fully take credit for the process. Even the first person to make sourdough was not the inventor of fermentation, or flour, or water. The first person to make a caramel sauce is not responsible for the caramelizing of sugar. You are only ever a participant in the process – cherish what you know, and remember what you have been given. Cooking is much, much more rewarding this way.

Don’t think you need to “make a recipe your own” or put a forced spin on something – a good recipe is a good recipe. It’ll become your own because you’ve made it so many times and it will start to resemble you and your kitchen. Be honest about where your recipes come from, and your cooking will shine.

I would LOVE to rant about recipe ownership (and how fickle chefs are about it) all day, and maybe I will someday, but it’s probably best put in the words of Pulitzer Prize winning rapper Kendrick Lamar: Sit down. Be humble. 

Lastly, treat your recipes like a tool box

Arm yourself with well-organized, scaleable, clear recipes that cite their sources. It will make you a powerful and capable cook.

Use your reliable recipes as a guide for future recipes. Develop your pound cake recipe, and make it your standard pound cake recipe. Figure out exactly how you like your osso buco, and use those ratios as a basis for other braises.

And, most importantly, print out your recipes and keep them in plastic sleeves.

Now, if only someone could have told all of our grandmas this…