Recipe

A recipe (or sometimes receipt in Commonwealth countries) is a set of instructions for cooking a specific dish. It is generally but not always found in a written format, frequently as one of a collection of many such in book form. Many recipes, however, are handed down orally, especially through families. Some recipes, particularly for exotic cocktails, are closely guarded secrets, kept by their creators.

A recipe typically lists the ingredients needed to prepare a dish and their proportions, gives the cooking time, and, less often, the total preparation time. It also generally indicates how many people the recipe will serve and tells the cook of any specialised utensils that are needed.

Recipes can be very simple—"place all ingredients in a large bowl, stir, and serve"— or extremely complex, running to many pages of text and including other subrecipes that must first be incorporated into the principle one in order to complete it.

A detailed index is available at CZ:Recipes.