This is the second part in Wayfinding, a series on the history and design of cookbooks.
In cookbooks, the format of recipes shifted over time, and the changing formats orient us to the dish in different ways: One asking us to wayfind through our own memories, and the other through replicable instructions. Early recipes in many cultures, including in China, India, and across Europe, were often formatted as paragraphs. Some do include measurements, but the process of preparing the dish is written as a narrative, not a list.
Juli McLoone, Curator of Special Collections at University of Michigan, describes this aspect of cookbook history as one of proximity and mobility: it’s the history “of figuring out how to write instructions for someone who is not next to you, she says. “Because if we go back even farther to the household manuals of the 18th century and 17th century, they’re not really expecting you to rely upon this as your sole source of instruction.” Instead, the book was meant to complement hands-on learning, taught in person to you by someone in the same room.
Our familiar modern recipe format, of ingredients and measurements, followed by discrete steps, became popular in the 19th century as the movement between social classes resulted in the need for shifts in teaching cooking and dining as a set of social etiquettes. This modern format was codified in the U.S. by Fannie Farmer’s 1896 book, The Boston Cooking School Cookbook, who famously gave us the volume-based measurements we still use in American cookbooks today. However, Farmer’s not the only author to use measurements plus steps (Mrs. Beeton’s in England is another, both preceded by Hannah Glasse). The Boston Cooking School Cookbook was used to teach cooking in a more classroom-style, standardized way, and it radically transformed how we interact with recipes and our food itself.
Steps and ingredient lists made even unfamiliar recipes accessible—whether or not the person sharing the recipe was there, in person, to teach you. Suddenly, the history of the person in the room, helping you wayfind, could be anywhere.
Within a couple decades, more and more cookbooks adopted this model, and recipes with steps and lists became ubiquitous in the 20th century. According to King, Chinese cookbooks, once more narrative, shifted towards measurements and steps by the 1950s. Before that, “you have to already know how to cook in order to be able to understand a lot of those recipes… Often no measurements, often a handful of this or some of that.” But even after, the guidance is pretty basic: “it assumes some knowledge already.”