Ask HN: Why aren't recipes written as timelines? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why aren't recipes written as timelines?

9 pointsandrewstuart9 comments

Recipes would be a whole lot easier to follow if their notation was in timeline form.

Why instead are they written as narrative?

http://www.cookingforengineers.com/ has an interesting condensed recipe card format: http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/89/Cheesecake-Plai...

Gracipe was made by two students from my Data Vis course at the TU Delft: http://www.gracipe.com/ (it only started during my course, their app is far more extensive now)

They parse and show recipes as icon-oriented graphical timelines.

There is a style that writes recipes as a list of steps and lists ingredients for each; AFAIK it's a common format in Germany and it's also used in the original "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" book. Otherwise recipes came from handwritten notes. Quite often the general process is known by heart, described elsewhere, or deducible, but the exact formula have to be written down. It's also convenient to have the list of products (and maybe equipment) in one place so you can make a shopping list. And the paper medium can only have a single representation, so it has to be a compromise :) But electronic recipes should be more fluid.

Just off the top of my head, being narrative gives greater scope for the cook to put their stamp on the recipe.

Like the Bible, much of the 'recipe' is open to interpretation - there is the recipe-maker's original intentions and then there is everyone's personal take on it.

In timeline form I believe there would be the propensity to see the recipe as a formula rather than a guide open for modification and exploration.

I use a service called cooksmarts.com (weekly recipes so you only have to shop and cook, very little planning) and they use an optimized timeline. I.e. everyone takes a different amount of time to do certain things so there is room for mistakes.

That's my best guess for why recipes don't have a timelines. You're also probably cooking more than one thing at a time I.e. entree, sides, desert etc. If each of those had their own timelines you'd be screwed.

Because no cooking equipment can deliver energy at a known precise rate. That means you cannot say "t=0 start frying meat. t=300s add liquid" because you might cook the meat faster or slower depending on equipment and what shape and size the meat was cut into.

Most recipes I have read are written as a less precise timeline though with exact times traded for estimates relative to the previous step or "until done"

I imagine after you detail the events on a timeline according to the recipe, you'd likely end up with a colorful list of instructions and little else - some events would also be quite detailed and - in many recipes - optional. I'd much rather see a recipe depicted in a mechanical 'exploded view' format though - but maybe that's just me.

Recipes are usually written chronolically

So you mean timeline the visual sense?

Tradition, probably

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