The Written Recipe

Appears in
Professional Cooking
Professional Cooking

By Wayne Gisslen

Published 2014

  • About

A recipe is a set of instructions for producing a certain dish. In order to duplicate a desired preparation, it is necessary to have a precise record of the ingredients, their amounts, and the way in which they are combined and cooked. This is the purpose of a recipe.

In spite of their importance, written recipes have many limitations. No matter how detailed a recipe may be, it assumes you already have certain knowledge—that you understand the terminology it uses, for example, and that you know how to measure ingredients.