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How to read a cookbook, or a recipe. I can follow one and hope for the best, or use it it remind myself of details of a dish I've made before, but the way most recipes and cookbooks are written is crazy to me. I can't visualize the final result at all, even with pictures. This is just about the only arena where the video format seems to be better than text, and that's outrageous.
Why would the amount of something and the instructions for it he in different places? In recipes where you make a dry mix and a wet mix completely separately and then comine them, why aren't those different subsections? Why in all the hemispheres of the earth is the oven temperature, usually the first thing you have to attend to, not the first line of the recipe?
They're not written in chronological order or in logistical subsections. I keep having to flip back to the ingredient list to find out how much of something I'll need (when I'm reading it, I know how to assemble my mise en place, thank you). The best thing I've found is to rewrite the whole recipe myself in a way that makes sense to me:
Two columns, one with ingredients and their anounts grouped by subsection and chronologically within that subsection; the second with instructions for what to do with those ingredients. It's easy for me to tell at a glance, oh, here's the part I can do in advance, here's me preparing the Holy Trinity, here's the spice blend I add midway, here's the part where I can take a smoke break, here's the garnish at the end.
PS. Time signatures are all about which dance steps you can do to the music, in my experience.
Okay so first of all let's talk about short recipes. Which are basically notes to self; like going through my grandmother's old recipe book I found a note card with a recipe for "pecan cookie bars" which was little more than a list of ingredients, an oven temp and a time. Was I supposed to mix the pecans into the batter or scatter them on top? Was I supposed to dollop them onto a cookie sheet, or bake them in a pan? If a pan, what size? Invariably, this note card was written at a baby shower in 1974 by someone who was chewing on one of said cookie bars and had that kind of context, and just jotted down the ingredients.
Those are useless to you unless you're B. Dylan Hollis.
Most other recipes, especially those found in cookbooks which are definitely meant to communicate to people who aren't familiar with the dish yet, ARE in chronological order. The ingredients list is a step you do before the "procedure." There's a concept called Mise En Place, it's a phrase from an obscure, obsolete Earth language called French, it directly translates to "put in place." The process:
Read the recipe through, so you have an understanding of the full process and what is needed when.
Gather all ingredients, cookware and utensils you will need.
Prep the ingredients including washing, peeling, slicing, chopping and pre-measuring into individual bowls.
Organize them in the order they are called for. Clean up from the prep process, store unused portions of ingredients, bin scraps, clean and put away measuring and chopping tools so you have a clear, clean and sanitary work space.
Cook. Execute the steps of the recipe devoting your full attention to the process.
Some recipes will separate stages, especially if there's a large lull in time between steps. For example, a cake recipe might intend for you to make the icing while the cake is baking. These usually do have ingredients lists and procedures separated into sections, though some don't and you're expected to read and understand the process before you start cooking.
You may note that I did mention that I have my mise en place before I start cooking. My struggle is entirely in your Step 1: Read the recipe. Making the recipe I can do, I cook and bake every day. Reading it is the struggle.
My ideal cookbook would look like python documentation: "This ~~function~~ step has these inputs and these outputs. Here is the typical use case."
I mean...they do that already?
Every recipe I've seen will either be written "in a large bowl mix flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder." Meaning all of the ingredients you've portioned out. If the recipe calls for the same ingredient in more than one step, it will say so. "Mix 2 cups of flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder in a large bowl." Then it'll specify "add remaining flour" or "add 1 cup flour" in some later step. Some might also mention that in the ingredients list, like "1 1/3 cup sliced strawberries, 2/3 cup for cake, 2/3 cup for topping."
I just wish 99% of the web page around the recipe would fuck off. I want a ONE SENTENCE description of the dish as it might appear on a restaurant menu, the time to prep and cook, the yield/portion size, the parts list and procedure. I don't want a fake story of someone's travels or family life, I don't want a geography lecture, and if you're going to write a long form essay on the process a la the script for an episode of a cooking show, put that AFTER the recipe itself, not before. Let me see the damn parts list in the top mile or so of the page.
That's fine for cooking, where I'll have it all in front of me, but doesn't help with reading. I just can't visualize it, or maybe I just can't remember it.
See, that actually IS helpful to me, and probably why I prefer certain recipe websites to cookbooks.
Possibly related question: Are you one of those folks without a mind's eye? What's the space catholic term for it? aphantasia?
No, I have a mind's eye. If the recipe says "stir until the sauce reaches a creamy, glossy texture" I can picture it perfectly.
Idk there's sometimes value in having quantities in decreasing order so you aren't changing measuring devices constantly and for the sake of minimizing clean up.
For me at least, I like to have everything out and ready to go. My wife writes her recipes as inline directions with NO separation and it's super annoying when you skim it and find "oh shit, I don't have any peanuts at all in the house."
The visualization is less about the ingredient quantities and more about the process I think. I DO find it annoying when you're using the same ingredient two or three times and they're is no giant, bold HEY DUMMY DONT PUT ALL THE FLOUR IN THE BOWL RESERVE SOME kind of message.
When I write a recipe for myself I do two columns, ingredients on the left and instructions on the right ordered by logical subsections like "peanut sauce", and "the roast". I put recipes on index cards, and also like you suggest, across the very top of the card I always write 3 things: 1. Name, 2. Total cooking surstion, and 3. Grill or oven temperature. So I guess we have more or less the same opinion in retrospect!
Two things.
First, that's just a badly written recipe then. In my experience, no matter how complicated a dish is, it can all fit on a single A4 page at 11pt, maximum two pages.
A recipe shouldn't say:
"Take a spoon and gently stir the cream for a 2 minutes till it gets a nice and foamy, soft white texture like a cloud on a hot summer day."
It should say:
"Stirr all the cream until it thickens and sticks to spoon when held upside down."
That contains all the information you need. What ingredients, how much of it, what to do, and what the result is. Most importantly, they shouldn't mention time, that's where people get hung up on and screw up the dish. The pan you use for 15 minutes on your stove with your chosen ingredients isn't the same as theirs. Especially water content in ingredients can massively change the timing.
Second, a recipe should also assume some knowledge about basic terminology like seared, baked, glazed, steamed, whipped, stirred, etc. They shouldn't be described in the recipe themselves. If that's not familiar, video recipes are definetly the better medium to teach recipes. If you watch enough of them, it will be pretty much clear what everything means.
My understanding of the way that recipes are written is that ingredients are put in a list so you know if you have everything you need, or if you need to run to the store). There is no point in trying to make those new brownies if I check my pantry and I am missing the brown sugar and the store is closed.
I do suspect that most people writing recipes are the kind to plan and prepare. Admittedly, it helps for working through the recipe for the purposes of writing it.
The most recent recipe i transcribed was, very much:
It is a sport. You read the recipe and visualize yourself making it. All the while thinking about how to manage time. Repeat that several times before starting. Then prep everything Chops veggies, measure spices, get oven hot, boil water. Whatever. Just have all that going.