Wayne Gisslen

The Uses and Limitations of Recipes

Appears in
Professional Cooking: 10th Edition
Professional Cooking

By Wayne Gisslen

Published 2025

  • About
Many people believe learning to cook means simply learning recipes. Knowledgeable cooks, in contrast, are able to prepare food without written recipes, if they have to, because they have a good understanding of basic principles and techniques. A recipe is a way of applying basic techniques to specific ingredients.

If you have already read Chapter 6, or have even casually leafed through this book, you know it is not just a book of recipes. Although it contains hundreds of recipes, they take up a relatively small part of it. Your main concern is learning techniques and procedures you can apply to any recipe.