Recipe

A recipe is a set of instructions that lists the ingredients and steps needed to prepare a specific dish or meal. It tells us exactly what we need and how to combine everything to make something delicious. Recipes can be for simple snacks or for big, fancy meals.

A sub-recipe or subrecipe is a recipe for an ingredient that will be used in making the main dish. This helps break down complex cooking into smaller, easier parts.

Recipe books, also called cookbooks or cookery books, are collections of many recipes in one place. They help us learn new ways to cook and can show us how different cultures prepare their foods. These books reflect cultural identities and social changes, showing how people's eating habits and traditions have evolved over time.

Historically, recipes were not just for food. In the past, the word "recipe" also included instructions for making medical remedies, because making food and medicine were closely linked in many homes.

History

Early examples

The earliest known written recipes come from 1730 BC, found on tablets from Mesopotamia. Other early recipes are from around 1600 BC in Babylonia. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs also show food being prepared. Many recipes from ancient Greece are known, including one short recipe quoted by Athenaeus.

Roman recipes appear starting in the 2nd century BCE. The collection called Apicius from the 4th or 5th century is the only complete cookbook from the classical world. It includes courses like appetizers, main courses, and desserts. Each recipe starts with “Take…” or “Recipe…”.

Arabic recipes are documented from the 10th century. The earliest Persian recipe is from the 14th century. Several recipe books from the Safavid period have survived.

Medieval and early modern medical recipes

In older English works, a recipe was called a “receipt.” Medical recipes were important in medieval Europe for sharing medical knowledge. Books like Bald's Leechbook served as medical encyclopedias. These books were often organized by ailment or body part.

People kept personal recipe books as treasured heirlooms. They recorded both cooking recipes and medical remedies, showing the connection between food and medicine at the time.

Modern recipes and cooking advice

The printing press in the 16th and 17th centuries led to many books on household management and cooking. By the 1660s, cookery became an art form, and cooks published their own books.

In the 19th century, cookery writing took its modern form. Eliza Acton’s Modern Cookery for Private Families from 1845 was very influential. It introduced listing ingredients and cooking times with each recipe and included the first recipe for Brussels sprouts.

Isabella Beeton published Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management between 1857 and 1861. It was a guide to running a Victorian household, with over 900 pages of recipes. Fannie Farmer’s The Boston Cooking School Cookbook from 1896 contained 1,849 recipes.

Components

Recipes can be written in different ways, but two common styles are used. One style shows instructions in one column and ingredients in another. The other style writes everything in a single block, mixing ingredients and steps.

Most modern recipes include several important parts:

• The name of the dish and its history.
• How many servings the recipe makes.
• A list of all ingredients needed, in the order they are used.
• Step-by-step instructions for preparing the dish.
• Measurements for ingredients, often using short forms like "oz" for ounces.
• The time needed to prepare and cook the dish.
• Any special tools required.
• How to cook the dish, including temperature and baking time if needed.
• How to serve the dish, such as warm or cold.
• Whether the dish is recommended to others.
• An optional photo of the finished dish.
• Nutritional information, like calories, to help with dietary needs.

Sometimes, recipe writers also suggest different ways to change a traditional dish, offering new flavors while keeping the same basic recipe.

Writers may add a short story before or after a recipe to share its cultural meaning or personal significance.

Sub-recipes

A sub-recipe is a smaller recipe for an ingredient that is needed in the main recipe. These are often used for things like spice mixes, sauces, pickles, preserves, jams, chutneys, or condiments. Sometimes a sub-recipe needs to sit for many hours or even overnight, which can make cooking more complicated. If you discover you need a sub-recipe ingredient you don’t have, you might need to go shopping or find a substitute.

Cookbooks with sub-recipes, like Christina Tosi’s Momofuku Milk Bar (2011) and Terry Bryant's Vegetable Kingdom (2020), are often aimed at more experienced cooks. Some people find creative ways to use leftover sub-recipes.

Internet and television recipes

By the middle of the last century, there were already thousands of cookbooks around. Things changed when cooking shows began on television. The very first TV cooking show was hosted by Philip Harben on the BBC in June 1946, called Cookery. Shortly after, James Beard started I Love to Eat, the first such show in the US. These shows brought recipes to many new viewers. At first, people could get recipes by mail from the BBC, and later they appeared on TV through a service called CEEFAX.

The internet also changed how we share recipes. In 1982, a group called net.cooks was created for sharing cooking ideas and recipes, later named rec.food.cooking. In 2008, especially in the US, people started cooking more at home because of money problems. This happened again during the coronavirus pandemic in the early 2020s.

Today, many people learn to cook from TV networks like the Food Network and from famous chefs such as Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, Nigella Lawson, and Rachael Ray. There are also popular shows like Top Chef and Iron Chef, plus many websites with free recipes. But cookbooks are still loved by many.

Copyright

Under U.S. copyright law, recipes themselves are not protected by copyright. However, a collection of recipes, like a cookbook, can be copyrighted. Also, extra information that comes with the recipe, such as pictures of the food or notes about its background, can be protected by copyright too.