Whenever an author is writing anything, they do so with an audience in mind. Recipes are no different. Whether that audience is students, anyone on a budget, experienced bakers/cooks, someone cooking for a big dinner party, etc. it’s important when analyzing a recipe to know who the recipe was written for.
In order for a work to be considered a recipe, it must be “a set of instructions for preparing a particular dish, including a list of ingredients required.” This definition is universally accepted because most recipes list all of the ingredients before explaining the steps or have them in a column next to the steps. In better recipes, the author will be much more exact in measurements of ingredients than in others. In Lean Brown’s “Eat Well on $4/day Good and Cheap,” she does an excellent job of saying how many servings the amount of ingredients will get you and even tells how much it will cost, something that is especially helpful and unique. She does this because of the specific audience she is writing for: anyone on a budget.
After the ingredient lists, recipes will either have step-by-step instructions or a paragraph explaining the steps. Majority of recipes also have a quick introduction explaining why the author wrote it/their connection to it. Recipes that are published in a book usually have the same format as the other recipes in the same book. The style is generally the same because it is more aesthetically pleasing. When comparing Kian Lan Kho’s “Phoenix Claws and Jade Trees” recipe book to an online blog Smittenkitchen.com, it is very interesting to notice the different style techniques. Kho’s Kung Pao Chicken recipe has a full page of pictures showing every step prior to the recipe. On the page of the actual recipe, it has a short paragraph explaining how even though it’s a Chinese recipe, it is really Americanized and then tells a different dish in the same cookbook to pair it with. It then has the list of recipes for the chicken and the sauce. On the other column of the page, it has small paragraphs which each step carefully written out. This style technique is easy to follow and the pictures would be helpful to reference while trying to reproduce the recipe.
On the online blog the Smitten Kitchen, for the recipe of breakfast-pizza, the author starts out with a personal story about why she chose to re-create this recipe. There are photos attached, but they are all placed in-between the explanation and before the recipe itself actually starts. They give credit to where the recipe is adapted from, and then she begins with an ingredient list. The steps are listed in paragraphs. At the end, the author then says what she did differently than the original recipe based on trial and era.
Online recipe blogs like this one are very personal and have many helpful tweaks because the author can go back and change a recipe whenever, because she doesn’t have to republish and print new copies of her cookbook. They are also open to everyone, because it’s a free blog and she posts everything for free.
Recipes are something that can be published in many different formats, have many different styles, but all of them-good or bad- contain an ingredient list and the steps necessary to be successful in cooking the dish.