How to write a recipe

The Food Chain

BBC

Arts, Society & Culture, Food

4.7 • 545 Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2026

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We all have recipes we turn to again and again, perhaps from the stained pages of our favourite cookbooks, or handed down through families. But have you ever wondered about the work that’s gone into writing that set of instructions? In this edition of The Food Chain, Ruth Alexander looks at the art and science of recipe writing.

How does a cook turn what is often an instinctive and creative process into a list of instructions anyone can follow? How much detail is too much, and what are the essential elements no recipe is complete without? Ruth talks to a well-known cook who describes her love-hate relationship with recipe writing and a cookbook editor reveals how she’s built recipes from chefs’ doodles or even notes scrawled on a napkin. Find out what it’s like to work in the world of recipe testing and how the art of writing recipes has changed over hundreds of years.

Producer: Lexy O’Connor

Sound engineer: Hal Haines

If you would like to get in touch with the show, please email: thefoodchain@bbc.co.uk

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:06.0	Right, start at the beginning.
0:07.7	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast.
0:09.7	Okay, hello.
0:10.6	And if you're into true crime.
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0:18.0	Because there's a caseload of award-winning podcasts.
0:20.7	Do you think this is actually going to go to trial?
0:22.8	That cast light on shady cyber criminals,
0:24.9	mysterious drownings and unsolved murders, from Bergen to Belfast.
0:29.0	I didn't know who I could trust.
0:30.8	Search, true crime on BBC Sounds.
0:33.3	The only thing left to do now is run.
0:40.3	Right. Roughly chopped the carrot matchsticks.
0:47.3	I'm following a recipe I've found online for easy vegetable soup.
0:53.1	Cook time 15 minutes. Prep time zero minutes. Apparently I say as I
0:59.0	stand here chopping carrots. Do I trust it? This is always the question with a recipe,
1:04.4	isn't it? Because it's not just a list of ingredients or a set of instructions. It's a promise that
1:09.6	what's written on the page will turn out beautifully
1:12.2	and in good time too. But we all know from bitter experience that that's not always what happens.
	...

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