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Writing the Recipe

(c)2003 Pam White

It sounds simple. Sell your family recipes for

money. Gather up your community's traditional

dishes and submit them to magazines. List

meals you make for guests and slap together a

cookbook. Right?

Wrong.

Writing down recipes is an art, and one that

keeps reinventing itself.

I have a wonderful cookbook - "The Home Queen

Cookbook" - that is packed with recipes

submitted by the wives of governor's,

senator's, famous businessmen, and other

notables. This book was published in the late

1800's, after Fannie Merritt Farmer's Boston

Cooking School cookbook was published, but

those fine home queens' submissions are less

than standard in their presentation.

Sponge Cake - "Ten eggs, weight of 8 in sugar

and four in flour, flavor with lemon, add a

pinch of salt." That is the entire recipe and

while seasoned cooks might be able to

understand what is meant, and professional

chefs sympathetic to the simple notes made for

memory's sake, new cooks would be stumped by

this listing of ingredients.

Write simply, but not as simply as the Home

Queens did. Remember that omissions or

mistakes are disastrous to the cook using your

recipe, and will also hurt your reputation

with editors. Think about how you felt the

first time a "friend" shared a fantastic

recipe with you but left out one or two of the

ingredients so your version would never be as

good as hers or his. If you've never been the

victim of a recipe-otomy then your friends are

true. If you have, you have my sympathy.

We all have our own way of creating dishes –

after family traditions, borrowing from this

cooking show or that classic cookbook.

Sometimes dishes are created out of necessity

– quickie dinners, no-time-to-shop meals that

use up stuff you have on hand, or ways to use

up garden surplus. Personally, I dream of

cakes and pastries, cassoulets and frittatas.

My original recipes come from those late

night, subconscious feasts.

We scribble notes on napkins, in journals or

keep them inside our head.

It's time to get organized. Dedicate an entire

notebook to recipe development, or buy a

recipe box and fill it with note cards on

which you've written your recipes and notes

about your results (including comments from

your resident taste-testers.) You're going to

need these notes and recipes on hand when you

find a new market to submit to.

Standardize - When writing a recipe, list the

ingredients in the order they appear in the

preparation. Write out measurements to avoid

any confusing abbreviations. When writing for

the internet or non-American publications

consider using both metric and non-metric

measurements, or providing a conversion rate.

If you don't, it means an extra step for your

reader to look on a conversion chart, or even

flat cakes or rock hard muffins.

Most recipes list the ingredients in one of

two ways. If you are using herbs, onions, or

eggs, for example, you might list "one-quarter

cup basil, washed and chopped," "one Vidalia

onion, sliced and sauteed," or "four eggs,

beaten." Alternatively, you could list the

ingredients and discuss the preparation in the

how-to part of the recipe, i.e., one-quarter

cup basil, one Vidalia onion, four eggs. When

using frozen or canned food, list the size of

the can or package.

Tools Needed - Unless you are writing recipes

for an article or a cookbook on slow cookery,

or stoneware pans, then you'll want to list

special tools, pans, or appliances that will

be needed to prepare each recipe. If the

recipe is for a chocolate, chocolate chip

quick bread, one way to write this part of the

recipe is "lightly butter a 9" by 3 " loaf pan

or muffin tins if you are making muffins."

Cooking Method - Do you preheat the oven,

start the grill, season the pizza stone? Not

everyone reads through a recipe before

embarking on the culinary adventure of making

the dish. Give your readers a bread - tell

them up front what pans they need and what

they need to do to them before they are ready

to pour the batter, or grill the steaks.

The Process - My favorite cookbooks are the

ones that tell a story, either as an

introduction to the recipe, or during the

paragraphs explaining the steps. You can

number the steps, or write it as an

explanation. In your pizza recipe, include the

history of pizza, your history with pizza, how

to make thin, crisp crusts or simple ways to

make cheese-stuffed crust if you want

something new to feed your teens. You can

weave your tidbits into the recipe - one

cookbook on breads gave a recipe for making

French baguettes with hard crusts. The key was

to spray the bread with water during the

baking. The author shared that she had,

unintentionally, spritzed water on the oven's

light bulb causing the hot bulb to shatter all

over the baking bread.

So how does the cook know when it's finished?

Don't just give the time parameters. Cake

recipes talk about the toothpick test. Flans,

I learned, are done when they are in the firm

yet wobbly stage. When making candy, be kind

to cooks without candy thermometers and define

what the hardball and softball stages look

like when staring into the pot at a spoon

covered in goo.

Extra Information - List substitutions. If

your recipe for sorrel soup can be made with

spinach as a substitute, share that. Tell

about garnishes. Will your whipped cream and

orange mousse look stunning with a mint leaf

or thin chocolate medallion perched on top?

Serving suggestions are another way to give

your readers more than they expect. My chile

relleno casserole benefits from cool side

dishes like a spinach salad or the mildness of

homemade flour tortillas. Nutritional

information is always a bonus, and sometimes a

requirement. Don't forget information on how

to store it, or if it tastes better the second

day.

Ready to submit? First, walk through the

recipe as you've written in. Did you list two

tablespoons butter but forget to tell your

readers to melt it? Did you have baking soda

on the list of ingredients but you never use

it? Regroup, revamp, rewrite until it's

perfect.

Copyright Stuff - Did you know that the

ingredients of a dish cannot be copyrighted

but the preparation can? You can take a

traditional recipe, chicken Cordon Bleu - and

use the exact ingredients found in countless

other cookbooks, but write your preparation in

your own words (or even with a new approach.)

I met a food writer once who said that her

recipes were taken from popular cookbooks –

she just changed three ingredients, adding

parsley, using white pepper instead of black,

and reducing the amount of salt by half. Ta da

- she felt she had an original recipe to sell.

Not cool. (Did I just say that?) If you are so

in love with one of Maida Heatter's lemon

cakes that you added something special to it

for your own signature touch, give credit to

her for originating the cake. If you want to

publish someone else's recipe on a website or

in a magazine, newsletter or book, write to

the publisher, addressing it to the

permissions department, and state where, why

and how you would like to use it. Permission

may be given with a fee attached or for free.

Don't steal recipes. Do acknowledge your

influences, read cookbooks published

throughout the last two hundred years, and

recognize that today's cookbook and magazine

buyers may enjoy reading more than cooking.

Write to that market, and you'll enjoy

success.

About the Author

Pamela White has written an e-book on becoming a food writer, teaches food writing classes and publishes on online newsletter on food writing. Information on all three is at http://www.food-writing.com