A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS
Illustration: Natasja Bökkerink
These days, most of us are pretty familiar with the unofficial standard outline of a recipe; in other words, there seems to be a kind of ‘recipe’ for the way in which they are written down. Cookery books will warn you somewhere in the preface to carefully read through all the instructions, so as not be unpleasantly surprised midway through cooking. Getting down to the recipe itself, it usually starts with a long or short list of ingredients and their quantities, beginning with the first one to use and ending with the last — if not divided for different elements of the recipe like the cake and its frosting. The rest of the instructions will be written down in a way that makes sense in regard to the time things take to cook or prepare. For example, a recipe for a stir-fry might tell you to prepare all the ingredients before you start cooking, whereas one for a stew will probably have you begin browning meat, during which there’ll be plenty of time to peel and chop some vegetables. If there is an oven involved and no dough that has to rise overnight, your recipe will probably tell you to pre-heat the oven before anything else. And so on.
So far, all is well. These kinds of recipes have a high chance of succeeding, because they are thorough and leave little open to interpretation. But they haven’t always been this good. The earliest written recipes were found carved into stones in Akkadian, a language spoken in what is now the Middle East almost 4.000 years ago. They consist of little more than a few lines of ingredients — no quantities, no techniques, no cooking times. They are fascinating in the way they give insight into the remarkable refinement of what people were eating in the region so many years ago. But they are not practical in any way, and bring to light an interesting question: What even makes a recipe a recipe?
What’s in a recipe?
The simplest answer to that question is also the most obvious: a recipe is a set of instructions that helps a cook replicate a certain end product, e.g. a cake, a stew, a stir-fry. If that is the case, however, can the Akkadian stone writings be considered recipes? Leaving out most crucial information, they are hard to replicate. What they lack mostly is an explanation of technique. On the other side of the spectrum, a ‘recipe’ teaching the technique of stir-frying — bite-sized ingredients, a large-surface pan, high heat, hot fat, quick cooking while stirring or shaking — to be applied to whatever ingredients you might fancy, might also not make the cut when defining a recipe. One could argue that the more experienced the cook, the fewer instructions are necessary. A recipe book for newly aspiring bakers might explain the technique of whipping air into butter and sugar referred to as ‘creaming’, before incorporating the eggs needed one at a time so as to get the mixture as light as possible. In a book for experienced bakers, the line “combine butter and sugar and incorporate the eggs” will suffice. Even more experienced bakers might not need even need quantities or technical explanation at all. In this case, it could be enough to write, for example: “Prepare a pound cake using ground almonds, flavoured with vanilla, soaked in a rosewater and lemon syrup.” Which leaves us with a bare concept, not much more than an idea.
“And how much parsley is too much parsley?”
While all of these types of recipes can be found, and are even written today, it is obvious that the ‘standardised’ recipe is the most useful of the bunch for most people. But of course, recipes are not just passed on through cookbooks or more modern video-based formats. Many of us will re-create the humble dishes of our childhoods solely relying on our senses of taste, vision, feeling and smell, together with a kind of muscle memory from making these foods before. Some of us might also know the difficulty of, when called upon by a dinner guest, writing down the recipe for something we’ve whipped up so many times before. How much olive oil to use? How long to boil the cauliflower? And how much parsley is too much parsley? It is in these cases that we rely on vague instructions such as “cook for something like fifteen to thirty minutes” and even vaguer quantities like “a handful of walnuts”. Re-creating such recipes then calls upon our own sense of right and wrong, one we have acquired over the years through both succeeding and failing in the kitchen. Inevitably, these foods will turn out differently when cooked by another cook — which can go both ways. Either they are closer to our own personal tastes, or they are just disappointing and fail to live up to our memories.
“ In the old teacher-apprentice system, pupils would be taught almost everything there is to know about a dish, but the teacher would leave out one crucial detail.”
Secrecy and ownership
Food writer Fuchsia Dunlop describes in her memoir about eating and cooking in China, Shark’s Fin & Sichuan Pepper, how in the old teacher-apprentice system, pupils would be taught almost everything there is to know about a dish, but the teacher would leave out one crucial detail. This was to ensure they would always remain the master of a dish and couldn’t be overhauled by their one-time students. A lot of people take this kind of pride in their cooking and feel a sense of ownership of their creations. I had a stepmom who was so proud of her recipe for apple pie that she wouldn’t give it to anyone. One afternoon, I secretly photocopied it. Since she has passed away, I am now the bearer of her great secret, and I like to think she would be happy it’s still being made — although she could just as well be furious, who knows. Either way, it really is the best apple pie I ever had. The only way to protect a recipe, though, is by actually keeping it a secret, like Colonel Harland Sanders has been sitting on his eleven herbs and spices since the late nineteen-thirties. (Or have they been leaked? Read more here.) Once it’s out in the world, you don’t have any ownership of it. I could give you all the recipes from all the cookbooks I own on this website, and there wouldn’t be any legal trouble. This is possible since copyright laws don’t apply to recipes, because of what they legally are: instructions, not a creative work. By law, they are nothing more than an IKEA assembly manual. Potentially, the way a recipe is phrased in a literary manner can be protected, but the recipe itself never is. While this is somewhat bizarre — the creativity usually lies within the actual food, not the way it’s phrased — it is also understandable. It would be difficult to claim a recipe as one’s own, since each one is indebted to other recipes and entire eating cultures, and a great many are variations on classic flavour combinations and cooking techniques. But then again, one could argue this also applies to every novel and every painting.
Of course, there is the occasional revolutionary idea, and recipes of this type usually become internet-famous nowadays. A good example is the pie crust recipe published in Cook’s Illustrated in 2007 that had a crazy ingredient: vodka. Some say this crust is particularly flaky because the alcohol stops the development of gluten in the dough, keeping it supple, while others ascribe the effect to the vodka’s lower boiling temperature in comparison to water, assuring a quicker evaporation of liquids causing crisper pastry. Although this recipe has been tried and shared by many influential people in food, most of them will ascribe it to J. Kenji López-Alt, the chef that came up with it. To claim it as one’s own, although legally unproblematic, would surely lead to backlash.
“A single recipe can change everything you’ve known about food — forever.”
Treasures and trophies
Regardless of the issue of legal ownership, recipes are very personal; they can feel like or even be treasures and trophies, sources of pride or trade secrets, and coming up with one can feel like a great leap forward. Finding or making up a recipe that works can be a revelation, making it hard to understand how one has ever cooked from the dark place that not knowing about it was. A single recipe can change everything you’ve known about food — forever. It can continue to bring people back to your kitchen table, wanting more of that magic, or remain a solitary pleasure that you only indulge in when completely unwatched. Regardless of whether you want to keep it to yourself, or share it with whoever asks, honesty — as always — is the best policy. Either way, the late M.F.K. Fisher summed it up best:
A recipe is supposed to be a formula, a means prescribed for producing a desired result, whether that be an atomic weapon, a well-trained Pekingese, or an omelet. There can be no frills about it, no ambiguities … and above all no “little secrets”. A cook who indulges in such covert and destructive vanity as to leave out one ingredient in a recipe which someone has admired and asked to copy is not honest, and therefore is not a good cook. He is betraying his profession and his art. He may well be a thief or a drunkard, or even a fool, away from this kitchens, but he is not a good cook if he cheats himself to this puny and sadistic trickery of his admirers, and no deep-fat kettle is too hot to brown him in.
This text was inspired by and vaguely based on M.F.K. Fisher’s essay Anatomy of a Recipe.
Text: Yannic Moeken
Copy editing: Charlotte Faltas
Illustrations: Natasja Bökkerink
Sources:
Erik Eckholm: Mesopotamia: Cradle of Haute Cuisine?
Jonathan Bailey: Recipes, Copyright and Plagiarism
JK Grence: Vodka Is NOT the Secret to the Perfect Pie Crust. We’ve Got a Way Better Recipe-and White Russians, Too
Mountain Eagle Staff: Colonel’s secret recipe revealed?
M.F.K. Fisher: Anatomy of a Recipe. In: With Bold Knife and Fork, first published in 1969
