Matt Brady ponders the troublesome question of how basic a recipe can be.
A recent poll by Tesco claimed that over half of us can only cook up to five dishes without a recipe.
We covered this poll in a short piece on loveFOOD, and it was met with some suspicion and a fair bit of derision by you. So we’d like to pose another question, as raised in the Comments of that article: how do we define a recipe?
How complicated does a recipe need to be?
Put an egg into boiling water. Wait a few minutes. Take it out of the water and serve in an eggcup. Eat with a teaspoon and a pinch of salt and pepper on the side.
Is the above a recipe? There’s one ingredient and the most basic of instructions and seasoning. Boiling an egg is not complicated. Neither is frying one.
However, it could be suggested that scrambled eggs are ever-so-slightly more complicated, in that they need the additions of milk and butter, and also require near-constant attention to achieve a good result.
For a beginner, a series of instructions to make scrambled eggs is a useful thing. It tells them what to do, so that surely makes it a recipe.
Although by extension of that same logic, instructions on how to boil an egg must also be a recipe. Indeed, many eminent chefs including Delia Smith (who caused controversy by including boiled eggs in her book How To Cook) and Jean-Christophe Novelli have advocated particular cooking times, although the timing is surely more down to how you like to eat your eggs. Here the line blurs.
If you still think scrambled eggs isn’t a recipe, let’s mix in some feta cheese with some small chunks of chorizo, herbs or freshly cracked black pepper. With those extras thrown in, we can surely say that this is now a recipe for scrambled eggs?
Further to that point, what about an omelette? Beat your eggs, add cheese and veg and cook in a shallow, wide pan – we’re definitely into recipe territory here, right?
Recipes or not?
Below, I’ve suggested a few things that I think are and aren’t recipes. Having said that the ‘real’ recipes aren’t that much more complicated than the non-recipes. So where is the line drawn?
Not recipes
- Boiled eggs
- Cheese on toast
Real recipes
- Scrambled eggs
- Croque monsieur
What is the definition of a recipe? What counts as one? Let us know in the Comments below.
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