My recipe notebooks contain few method notes, usually just enough to remind me of oven temperatures, goal textures, and things I know I’ll forget like “add potatoes at end of cooking so they don’t go to mush damn it.”
One of my favorite cookbooks is from 1911 and is written in Slovenian with a fair bit of German mixed in for fun. Recipes are mostly ingredients lists and method notes often include the phrase “in the usual way.” As in “whip the eggs in the usual way for binding fish,” in a recipe for what I suppose could be called pike quenelles but are (translated) “lake fish dumplings for clear soup.” The recipes are uniformly good. But you do have to know what you’re doing and as for pictures… it was 1911, go whistle.
I absolutely love "in the usual way". If I ever write an autobiography I think I need to call it that. Sidenote: pike quenelles are a very popular preparation of pike in Finland also. I caught a few of those toothsome monsters last year and made some with my mother in law. A real treat.
A very defensible strategy. Dill is such a pleasure.
I rarely bother because I rarely bother, but I love them beside fondant potatoes and a green salad. Something about the textures is very pleasing to me.
At my parents in law's summer cottage the water is teaming with pike. Big ones. I love making "quenelles" from them because I don't much care for the texture of the fish in "unprocessed" form. I think it might be worth sharing this recipe when the season comes.
Love this idea of “in the usual way”. Lots of Italian cookbooks make away with precise measurements and instead follow the ingredients with the acronym qb (quanto basta) ie as much as it needs. And that goes not just for salt and pepper but even things like flour in cookies! It used to drive me nuts at first but now I appreciate the underlying sentiment - not everything can be given in precise measurements and as long as the author provides enough guidance on thr desired look and feel of what you are making, a recipe will still work.
Thanks for sharing this - a wonderful read and loved those quotes!
There can definitely be a balance with this one. Specificity in measurements when possible will always be welcome, but acknowledging that look and feel, as you say, is key, and explaining that, is a mark of a really thoughtful recipe (and writer). It is also a very accessible way of writing. For example, the amount of water in certain recipes can change depending on local humidity, which means depending on what country you are in. Anyway, you've got me thinking!! And thanks for reading and leaving such an interesting comment.
I hate cooking with recipes. I love the pictures and ingredient lists as a jumping-off point. There is nothing to compare to a keen sense of smell to know when something is done, timers be damned. I was a pro but am now a home cook. Nothing helps my technique more than cooking every day without leaning on favorites. I have retained few cookbooks. Pepin's La Technique takes me almost everywhere I need to go. I'm never happy with my first attempts, and as Mr. Foydel notes, repetition gets you where you want to go. The last thing I do is make it pretty, but I'm not consumed with that.
I totally agree with this - I find cookbooks for me are more a way of studying and learning rather than pure execution. I love reading them, looking at ingredients, pictures and methods, and then taking that knowledge with me into my fridge and pantry to put what I have to good use.
That's really the key thing. Repetition. Learning an instinctive feel for things. You describe that so well. Also, thanks for reading dl, and thanks for your support as a subscriber. I really appreciate it.
Having been a pro chef and restaurant owner I am always befuddled by cook books that try to make a pro chef out of home cooks. Home cookery is a wholly different matter and if your dinner party guests expect a restaurant meal then you are in a bad spot. My wife, also a former pro, and I always comment that "no one else in the county is eating this well tonight" because our simple home cooking is just that, solid, simple cooking done right. I've eaten at many homes of the years and the best meals are the ones where the home cook prepares a favorite recipe they've made many times. This is a point often overlooked - the dish will only be good after 5 tries, and only great after 10. There's just no getting around experience.
When I'm writing a recipe for myself, I include the absolute barest instructions because I've been cooking long enough to fill in the gaps. But if I'm writing a recipe for someone else, I do include extra details, the kind not found in commercial cookbooks, because I don't know the exact level of experience this other person might have and I want to anticipate any questions they might have. Anytime I see unique instructions for a recipe I immediately like the cook/baker more because it's such a rare thing to see.
Most food blogs look and sound exactly the same and I find myself using the "Jump to Recipe" button more and more. It seems like everyone thought they could do a blog and when they realized they aren't a writer, they just copied what they saw and thus helped perpetuate the stale and predictable format. I would love to see a more creative approach to recipe writing and perhaps pictures that aren't quite so perfect.
I'd always be interested in reading new and creative approaches to recipe writing. Have you read First, Catch by Thom Eagle? A very creative "cookbook" that doesnt really have recipes. I recommend it.
Loved this . I have to admit I always go for the recipes with pictures first then I might take a peek at the others . Love the ‘The cliché suggests a picture is worth a thousand word. But there is no richer, more multi-sensory image than the one a handful of elegant, considered, and choice words can paint in our mind’s eye. 👁️
Loved this, Wil! Particularly: “The cliché suggests a picture is worth a thousand word. But there is no richer, more multi-sensory image than the one a handful of elegant, considered, and choice words can paint in our mind’s eye.” ‼️and thanks so much for linking to my piece. ❤️
Ah! I don't feel so alone! This brings back all the times I've given out a decades and certainly century old recipes and I can't bare to translate them because they're so much a part of of the culture it's a part of, who wrote it, when it was written, and the sensibility of the cook and time. I've stopped counting how many times a reader comes back and scolds me for it and how many times I've written back and point out the recipes have made you a better cook just by having to use your bran.
I’m a sensory learner and I would love having both worlds of descriptive, poetic instructions and pictures in every cookbook. I haven’t cooked with a rice cooker since I moved out of my parent’s house for undergrad and learned how to make perfect rice every time just from listening to the pot. Cooking is a full sensory experience, so I use all of my senses in the kitchen. Descriptive instructions like the examples you provided make you feel more immersed and connected to the recipe and the meal you’re making from it. They also help you flex your intuition by teaching you how to listen to and feel your senses. A win-win imho!
Those are really fair points and what you say about cooking being a full sensory experience is very well put. Unfortunately one of those full sensory experiences is the smell of nuts roasting in an oven, by which time Ive forgotten about them and theyve already started to burn. Anyway, thanks for reading, I always appreciate your interesting comments Starbie!!
That means an awful lot to me, thanks. You know, Im still working on a piece about finding connections to a new place through food and keeping connections with home that was very much inspired by your comment on a previous post. I will be sure to give you a shout out if I manage to do the subject justice and finish the piece.
Thank you! I’d really appreciate that! Food history and cultural connection in the African diaspora is one of my passions and a friend of mine and I are working on putting our food histories and cultural stories into a collection of essays. I feel lucky to have access to my own family’s oral histories and close friends who love sharing theirs AND work in national archives and museums 😂
If I might have my little rant about the memoir recipe thing (I'm going to anyway)... The thing is, they're awful, except when they're not. Because the problem isn't whether there's a memoir or not. The problem is who's writing it and why they're writing it. They don't have to be good writers necessarily, but even if the best writers are doing it for SEO it will be blatantly heartless and I will be furious about it. If, however, they're a good writer (hi Wil, that's you) and telling a story that's actually worth reading - because it says something about them, or about us - then you won't even notice you haven't got to the ingredients yet. Don't tell me about your grandma just because she's your grandma, and Google says you need 450 words for the indexing bots. Tell me about the day, to borrow from Iain Banks, your grandmother exploded, in exactly as many words as it takes to tell that story. And then how to make Yiayia's spanakorizo.
Haha, you know I only "clocked" the SEO aspect of some of these shitty memoir recipes when I was researching a previous post recently (shows what I know about SEO I guess). Thanks for the rant AG. You always have a corner of my space here to vent as you so wish.
A beautifully written piece - thank you. It’s made me think about putting more of ‘myself’ into my recipes, which I always try to….and yes, there’s definitely poetry in a good recipe! I like to think my recipes call upon my own experiences, tastes, mood and feelings…..and of course, love!
I share your affection for the memoir approach to a recipe - to me, that says and shows so much more about a recipe than a photograph, which only captures an image and not the soul!
Brilliant piece - thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I’m no professional chef, but give me words every time. Worse than photos - YouTube videos. And I ain’t just talking cooking here. Everytime someone sends me a video about anything, I cringe. Most of the time, I don’t watch them…
You perfectly describe what we're losing: "...I do lament the recipes and writing we don’t see in print due to our generation’s Elizabeth David not having a big enough social following to merit a big enough advance to support her food writing."
It is not only restaurants that have cryptic recipes. My experience with church cookbooks and recipes from grandmas have similar issues. Food magazines also have issues with methods and even ingredient portions.
My recipe notebooks contain few method notes, usually just enough to remind me of oven temperatures, goal textures, and things I know I’ll forget like “add potatoes at end of cooking so they don’t go to mush damn it.”
One of my favorite cookbooks is from 1911 and is written in Slovenian with a fair bit of German mixed in for fun. Recipes are mostly ingredients lists and method notes often include the phrase “in the usual way.” As in “whip the eggs in the usual way for binding fish,” in a recipe for what I suppose could be called pike quenelles but are (translated) “lake fish dumplings for clear soup.” The recipes are uniformly good. But you do have to know what you’re doing and as for pictures… it was 1911, go whistle.
I absolutely love "in the usual way". If I ever write an autobiography I think I need to call it that. Sidenote: pike quenelles are a very popular preparation of pike in Finland also. I caught a few of those toothsome monsters last year and made some with my mother in law. A real treat.
They are so good. How do Finns serve their pike quenelles?
I would read a book with that title, even if it contained no recipes.
Same way much home food is served. With mashed potatoes and a creamy sauce flavoured with lots of dill.
A very defensible strategy. Dill is such a pleasure.
I rarely bother because I rarely bother, but I love them beside fondant potatoes and a green salad. Something about the textures is very pleasing to me.
At my parents in law's summer cottage the water is teaming with pike. Big ones. I love making "quenelles" from them because I don't much care for the texture of the fish in "unprocessed" form. I think it might be worth sharing this recipe when the season comes.
Love this idea of “in the usual way”. Lots of Italian cookbooks make away with precise measurements and instead follow the ingredients with the acronym qb (quanto basta) ie as much as it needs. And that goes not just for salt and pepper but even things like flour in cookies! It used to drive me nuts at first but now I appreciate the underlying sentiment - not everything can be given in precise measurements and as long as the author provides enough guidance on thr desired look and feel of what you are making, a recipe will still work.
Thanks for sharing this - a wonderful read and loved those quotes!
There can definitely be a balance with this one. Specificity in measurements when possible will always be welcome, but acknowledging that look and feel, as you say, is key, and explaining that, is a mark of a really thoughtful recipe (and writer). It is also a very accessible way of writing. For example, the amount of water in certain recipes can change depending on local humidity, which means depending on what country you are in. Anyway, you've got me thinking!! And thanks for reading and leaving such an interesting comment.
I hate cooking with recipes. I love the pictures and ingredient lists as a jumping-off point. There is nothing to compare to a keen sense of smell to know when something is done, timers be damned. I was a pro but am now a home cook. Nothing helps my technique more than cooking every day without leaning on favorites. I have retained few cookbooks. Pepin's La Technique takes me almost everywhere I need to go. I'm never happy with my first attempts, and as Mr. Foydel notes, repetition gets you where you want to go. The last thing I do is make it pretty, but I'm not consumed with that.
I totally agree with this - I find cookbooks for me are more a way of studying and learning rather than pure execution. I love reading them, looking at ingredients, pictures and methods, and then taking that knowledge with me into my fridge and pantry to put what I have to good use.
You've done a very good job of describing my relationship with a lot of my favourite cookery books there as well. Really interesting, thanks Annie.
That's really the key thing. Repetition. Learning an instinctive feel for things. You describe that so well. Also, thanks for reading dl, and thanks for your support as a subscriber. I really appreciate it.
Having been a pro chef and restaurant owner I am always befuddled by cook books that try to make a pro chef out of home cooks. Home cookery is a wholly different matter and if your dinner party guests expect a restaurant meal then you are in a bad spot. My wife, also a former pro, and I always comment that "no one else in the county is eating this well tonight" because our simple home cooking is just that, solid, simple cooking done right. I've eaten at many homes of the years and the best meals are the ones where the home cook prepares a favorite recipe they've made many times. This is a point often overlooked - the dish will only be good after 5 tries, and only great after 10. There's just no getting around experience.
Cooking is such a sensory experience so why not use all of them. I love the idea of the sound a cake should make.
Such imaginative and empathetic writing I think. Really has the reader in mind and how to help them.
When I'm writing a recipe for myself, I include the absolute barest instructions because I've been cooking long enough to fill in the gaps. But if I'm writing a recipe for someone else, I do include extra details, the kind not found in commercial cookbooks, because I don't know the exact level of experience this other person might have and I want to anticipate any questions they might have. Anytime I see unique instructions for a recipe I immediately like the cook/baker more because it's such a rare thing to see.
Most food blogs look and sound exactly the same and I find myself using the "Jump to Recipe" button more and more. It seems like everyone thought they could do a blog and when they realized they aren't a writer, they just copied what they saw and thus helped perpetuate the stale and predictable format. I would love to see a more creative approach to recipe writing and perhaps pictures that aren't quite so perfect.
I'd always be interested in reading new and creative approaches to recipe writing. Have you read First, Catch by Thom Eagle? A very creative "cookbook" that doesnt really have recipes. I recommend it.
I have not, but now I'll check it out. Thanks!
Loved this . I have to admit I always go for the recipes with pictures first then I might take a peek at the others . Love the ‘The cliché suggests a picture is worth a thousand word. But there is no richer, more multi-sensory image than the one a handful of elegant, considered, and choice words can paint in our mind’s eye. 👁️
Loved this, Wil! Particularly: “The cliché suggests a picture is worth a thousand word. But there is no richer, more multi-sensory image than the one a handful of elegant, considered, and choice words can paint in our mind’s eye.” ‼️and thanks so much for linking to my piece. ❤️
Thanks so much, Teresa. And it was my pleasure to link to your work. I've really learnt a lot from what I've read of yours in recent months.
Same for me! Glad our newsletter paths have crossed🙏🏻.
Ah! I don't feel so alone! This brings back all the times I've given out a decades and certainly century old recipes and I can't bare to translate them because they're so much a part of of the culture it's a part of, who wrote it, when it was written, and the sensibility of the cook and time. I've stopped counting how many times a reader comes back and scolds me for it and how many times I've written back and point out the recipes have made you a better cook just by having to use your bran.
I am working on a piece that looks at some old Finnish recipes. The way they are written is fascinating. Thanks for reading, Pat. Really appreciated.
That's going to be a good one! What I really love is the recipes assume you know what you're doing/ingredient names. I've had people throw a fit on me
I’m a sensory learner and I would love having both worlds of descriptive, poetic instructions and pictures in every cookbook. I haven’t cooked with a rice cooker since I moved out of my parent’s house for undergrad and learned how to make perfect rice every time just from listening to the pot. Cooking is a full sensory experience, so I use all of my senses in the kitchen. Descriptive instructions like the examples you provided make you feel more immersed and connected to the recipe and the meal you’re making from it. They also help you flex your intuition by teaching you how to listen to and feel your senses. A win-win imho!
Those are really fair points and what you say about cooking being a full sensory experience is very well put. Unfortunately one of those full sensory experiences is the smell of nuts roasting in an oven, by which time Ive forgotten about them and theyve already started to burn. Anyway, thanks for reading, I always appreciate your interesting comments Starbie!!
😂 thanks, Wil! your posts are always so fun to read! Your posts make me think about food and cooking in such interesting ways.
That means an awful lot to me, thanks. You know, Im still working on a piece about finding connections to a new place through food and keeping connections with home that was very much inspired by your comment on a previous post. I will be sure to give you a shout out if I manage to do the subject justice and finish the piece.
Thank you! I’d really appreciate that! Food history and cultural connection in the African diaspora is one of my passions and a friend of mine and I are working on putting our food histories and cultural stories into a collection of essays. I feel lucky to have access to my own family’s oral histories and close friends who love sharing theirs AND work in national archives and museums 😂
If I might have my little rant about the memoir recipe thing (I'm going to anyway)... The thing is, they're awful, except when they're not. Because the problem isn't whether there's a memoir or not. The problem is who's writing it and why they're writing it. They don't have to be good writers necessarily, but even if the best writers are doing it for SEO it will be blatantly heartless and I will be furious about it. If, however, they're a good writer (hi Wil, that's you) and telling a story that's actually worth reading - because it says something about them, or about us - then you won't even notice you haven't got to the ingredients yet. Don't tell me about your grandma just because she's your grandma, and Google says you need 450 words for the indexing bots. Tell me about the day, to borrow from Iain Banks, your grandmother exploded, in exactly as many words as it takes to tell that story. And then how to make Yiayia's spanakorizo.
Haha, you know I only "clocked" the SEO aspect of some of these shitty memoir recipes when I was researching a previous post recently (shows what I know about SEO I guess). Thanks for the rant AG. You always have a corner of my space here to vent as you so wish.
A beautifully written piece - thank you. It’s made me think about putting more of ‘myself’ into my recipes, which I always try to….and yes, there’s definitely poetry in a good recipe! I like to think my recipes call upon my own experiences, tastes, mood and feelings…..and of course, love!
Thanks for the kind words, Will. I am convinced seeing more of the writer in the work is a positive. Good luck. And thanks for reading.
I share your affection for the memoir approach to a recipe - to me, that says and shows so much more about a recipe than a photograph, which only captures an image and not the soul!
Brilliant piece - thanks for sharing your thoughts!
When done well, food memoir is such a special form. Thanks for reading as ever Jack.
I’m no professional chef, but give me words every time. Worse than photos - YouTube videos. And I ain’t just talking cooking here. Everytime someone sends me a video about anything, I cringe. Most of the time, I don’t watch them…
Note to self: don't send Frank any cooking videos. But, as always, thanks for reading.
<insert laugh emoji here>
You perfectly describe what we're losing: "...I do lament the recipes and writing we don’t see in print due to our generation’s Elizabeth David not having a big enough social following to merit a big enough advance to support her food writing."
Thanks for that kind comment. And thanks for reading.
It is not only restaurants that have cryptic recipes. My experience with church cookbooks and recipes from grandmas have similar issues. Food magazines also have issues with methods and even ingredient portions.
Good luck deciphering them.
Very good points. I've never read a church cookbook though, James. I'm really intrigued...
Wet sand is exactly right, of course.
Such a spot on description.