A Gallery of Recipes
A gallery of some of the common and uncommon ways recipes are structured. This isn’t an exhaustive collection, just some examples I’ve collected.
Eliza Acton. Modern Cookery, In All Its Branches. 1845. Internet Archive, b21531857 (external link).
Modern Cookery was the first to split ingredients and their measurements from the procedure.
Both volumes and weights are used, depending on the recipe. (I love the old measurements, such as the saltspoonful ssp, about 1/4 teaspoon, and the dessertspoonful, or 1/2 tablespoon).
Hattie A. Burr. The Woman Suffrage Cook Book. 1890. MSU Libraries Digital Repository, https://n2t.net/ark:/85335/m5dm30 (external link).
A rhyming recipe, written so you could memorize and cook with it even without the printed copy.
The majority of the recipes in the book are in a narrative format, with measurements embedded in the procedure.
Isabella Beeton. The Book of Household Management. 1861. Internet Archive, b20392758 (external link).
This looks closer to the contemporary format we’re familiar with: a list of ingredients and measures, followed by the procedure (although the procedure isn’t split up into numbered steps).
The average cost is an interesting bit that usually doesn’t appear in contemporary recipes for home cooks, but recipe costing is a critical part of professional kitchen management.
The format is described in the book:
It will be seen, by reference to the following Recipes, that an entirely original and most intelligible system has been pursued in explaining the preparation of each dish. We would recommend the young housekeeper, cook, or whoever may be engaged in the important task of “getting ready” the dinner, or other meal, to follow precisely the order in which the recipes are given. Thus, let them first place on their table all the INGREDIENTS necessary; then the modus operandi, or MODE of preparation, will be easily managed. By a careful reading, too, of the recipes, there will not be the slightest difficulty in arranging a repast for number of persons, and an accurate notion will be gained of the TIME the cooking of each dish will occupy, of the periods at which it is SEASONABLE, as also of its AVERAGE COST. (Beeton 55)
Irma M. Rombauer. The Joy Of Cooking. 1923. 1957. Internet Archive, in.ernet.dli.2015.126676 (external link).
The recipes interleave ingredients and measures with instructions. This format works really well for the compact, narrow column format.
Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle, and Julia Child. Mastering the Art of French Cooking. 1961.
A two column format, with ingredients, measures, and cooking implements in the left column and instructions on the right. The rules between each section break up the recipe, which feels important for instructions as dense and complicated as these.
The introduction describes the motivation:
All of the master recipes and most of the subrecipes in this book are in two-column form. On the left are the ingredients, often including some special piece of equipment needed; on the right is a paragraph of instruction. Thus what to cook and how to cook it, at each step in the proceedings, are always brought together in one sweep of the eye. (Beck et al. ix)
Some recipes list ingredient weights as a baker’s percentage, where one ingredient (for baking, this is usually flour) is set at 100% and then the other ingredients are listed as weights relative to that.
This makes it easy to scale a recipe by a multiple (“I want to make four loaves”) or around a limited ingredient (“I only have 200g of strawberries”).
An example from Tartine Bread. The method spans multiple pages, and further in-depth discussion and history follows. Nearly one quarter of the book is devoted to this single “recipe.”
| Ingredient | Quantity | Baker’s Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Water (80°F) | 700 grams plus 50 grams | 75 |
| Leaven | 200 grams | 20 |
| Total Flour | 1,000 grams (1 kilogram) | 100 |
| White Flour | 900 grams | 90 |
| Whole Wheat Flour | 100 grams | 10 |
| Salt | 20 grams | 2 |
Some recipes specify ingredients as ratios. A classic mirepoix is 2 parts onion : 1 part carrot : 1 part celery. This is especially useful for something that will be used as part of another dish (e.g. a mirepoix might be the base for a stock and not a dish itself), so the amount you need depends on how it’s going to be used.
“Barley Salad” (external link). Modernist Cuisine, 7 February 2013. Accessed 18 August 2021.
Modernist Cuisine goes full in on the tabular format.
The core series of Modernist Cuisine, written for professional chefs, doesn’t include the volume column (although it occasionally lists conventional measures, such as “4 egg yolks”). Modernist Cuisine At Home for home cooks uses all three of the weight, volume, and baker’s percentages columns.
Michael Chu. “Chocolate Cake” (external link). Cooking for Engineers, 23 May 2021. Accessed 18 August 2021.
The recipes are first presented in a more conventional form with each step accompanied by a photo, but these tables are included at the bottom. They show how the individual parts of the recipe flow into each other.
Sources
- Eliza Acton. Modern Cookery, In All Its Branches. 1845. Internet Archive, b21531857 (external link).
- “Barley Salad” (external link). Modernist Cuisine, 7 February 2013. Accessed 18 August 2021.
- Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle, and Julia Child. Mastering the Art of French Cooking. 1961.
- Isabella Beeton. The Book of Household Management. 1861. Internet Archive, b20392758 (external link).
- Hattie A. Burr. The Woman Suffrage Cook Book. 1890. MSU Libraries Digital Repository, https://n2t.net/ark:/85335/m5dm30 (external link).
- Michael Chu. “Chocolate Cake” (external link). Cooking for Engineers, 23 May 2021. Accessed 18 August 2021.
- Chad Robertson. Tartine Bread. 2010.
- Irma M. Rombauer. The Joy Of Cooking. 1923. 1957. Internet Archive, in.ernet.dli.2015.126676 (external link).