Recipe source
How the format works
- Indent an ingredient under the step that eats it. That's the whole idea. Any line with lines indented beneath it is an operation; any line without children is an ingredient.
- Ingredients are
US | metric | name | note. The note is optional; so is the metric. An amount with no number (pinch,to taste) is left alone when scaling. - Operations are
verb | detail—bake | {oven}, 30 to 40 min. The verb is what shows in the box. - Operations nest, and they can branch: two whisked mixtures meeting in one bowl is just two operations indented under a third. (See Buttermilk Pancakes.)
- Header lines at zero indent:
title:yield:pan:oven:prep:finish:.{pan}and{oven}interpolate — change the pan and the instructions rewrite themselves. - Name a branch with
@nameafter the verb —whisk @dry. The name shows on the box and lets the written recipe say “the dry and wet mixtures” instead of “the two mixtures”. - Use an ingredient twice with a line starting
>, written like any ingredient but naming one you already declared:> 2 Tbs | 28 g | unsalted butter. The declaration keeps the full amount and picks up a “held back” note; the reference is where the held-back part goes. (See Skillet Cornbread.) - Don't want to type it out? “Paste a recipe” converts an ordinary one, and the same dialog has a prompt you can hand to any AI assistant — paste its answer back in the same box and it gets used as written.
- Times in a detail are read for the kitchen timer:
30 to 40 min,1 hr 30 min,45 sec,1 to 2 hours. A phrase startinguntil…is kept as the doneness cue, andovernightis understood as a rest rather than something to stand and watch.
Fig. 1 — every ingredient flows into the box that contains it; every box flows into the box that contains it. Hover or tab through a box to trace what goes into it.