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Recipe · How to / How not to

How to Write a Recipe (and How Not To)

Nobody scrolled past your grandmother's Tuscan villa to learn that pasta needs salt.

By Cynical SallyIssue Nº 1

A recipe is a set of instructions for making food. That is the entire job. Somewhere along the way the internet decided it was also a memoir, a SEO landfill, and a place to grieve a dog you had in 2009. The reader came hungry, holding a phone with one clean finger, standing over a pot. They do not want your origin story. They want grams.

This is what you getA real Full Truth, in full
Cynical SallyRecipe

The Full Truth

on A food blog's 'Creamy Garlic Tuscan Pasta' recipe with a 700-word preamble

4.1
out of ten
You spent 700 words on a Tuscan villa you have never visited and zero words on how much garlic. The one number I needed, and it is in your travel diary instead of the recipe.
The Investigation
  1. 01

    The recipe is hostage to the preamble

    Critical

    Seven hundred words and four lifestyle photos stand between the reader and the ingredient list. By the time anyone reaches 'pasta', the water has boiled over. Move the ingredients and step one above the fold and add a 'jump to recipe' button. Keep your villa story if you must, but put it after the recipe, where the two people who want it can find it.

  2. 02

    Quantities that assume the reader can read your mind

    Critical

    'A handful of spinach', 'a good amount of garlic', 'cream'. How much cream? For how many people? A handful from whose hand? Give grams and a volume fallback (250g spinach / 2 large handfuls), specify '4 cloves, finely sliced', and state the yield as 'serves 4'. A recipe is a contract, not a vibe.

  3. 03

    Timings with no doneness cue

    Notable

    'Simmer the sauce for 5 minutes' tells me nothing useful, because my pan and your pan are not the same pan. Anchor every time to something the senses can confirm: 'simmer 4 to 6 minutes, until it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon and a finger drawn through leaves a clean line'. Now it works in any kitchen, on any hob.

The Copy Clinic

There is something about a creamy garlic pasta that takes me right back to the rolling hills of Tuscany, where the golden light spills over the cypress trees and life simply slows down... (continues for 680 more words)

Creamy Garlic Tuscan Pasta. Serves 4. Prep 10 min, total 25 min. You will need a large frying pan and one pot. The trick: reserve a cup of pasta water before draining, it is what makes the sauce cling instead of slide. [Jump to recipe]

Add a good glug of cream and a handful of spinach, then let it all cook down until it looks ready.

Pour in 250ml double cream and add 200g spinach. Simmer 4 to 6 minutes over medium heat, until the spinach has wilted fully and the sauce coats the back of a spoon.

The Action Plan
  1. 1Cut the preamble to two sentences and move the full ingredient list plus step one above the fold, with a 'jump to recipe' button at the very top.
  2. 2Rewrite every quantity in grams and volume, give exact clove and ml counts, and state the yield and total time before the first step.
  3. 3Attach a sensory doneness cue to every timed step ('until golden', 'until it coats a spoon') so the recipe survives a different stove.
  4. 4Pull the one make-or-break technique (reserve the pasta water) into a one-line 'the trick' callout at the top, then test the whole thing on someone who has never cooked it.
Yours for the price of a coffee.Printed with disdain
Your turn

That was a stranger's recipe. Drop yours, I will go just as hard.

One coffee, from €2,99. No mercy.

The good news: a recipe is one of the few things on the web where 'useful' and 'beautiful' are the same move. Clear quantities, real timings, the one technique that actually matters. Get out of the way and you look like a pro. Bury the lede under 700 words and you look like someone padding for ad impressions, which is exactly what you are doing, and everyone knows it.

How to do it right
  • 01Put the ingredient list and the first instruction above the fold. The reader is standing at a stove. Respect that.
  • 02Give quantities in weight (grams) plus volume, and state pan size, heat level, and doneness cues ('until it coats the back of a spoon'), not just minutes.
  • 03Name the one technique that makes or breaks the dish, and explain why, in one sentence. That is the value nobody can copy-paste.
  • 04Write each step as one action you can do without re-reading it. 'Salt the water until it tastes like the sea' beats a paragraph about your trip to Sicily.
  • 05Add a 'jump to recipe' button and an honest yield, prep time, and total time at the very top. Trust earns the scroll back.
How not to
  • Opening with 700 words about the season, your childhood, and 'this humble dish' before a single ingredient appears.
  • Vague quantities: 'a handful of basil', 'a good glug of oil', 'season to taste' as the entire seasoning instruction.
  • Timings with no sensory cue, so 'cook for 10 minutes' burns on a gas hob and stays raw on an induction one.
  • The 16-photo step-by-step where every photo is the same beige pan from a slightly different angle.
  • Burying the actual technique ('reserve the pasta water') in step 7 where panicking cooks never find it in time.