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"Recipes are stories, glimpses of unforgettable moments between vulnerable hungry/thirsty people who are fed by love through the art of cooking."
What Are Recipes? story by Doug Smith
Just recently the thought came to my mind, "What is a recipe?" It’s one of those things that you just know, or at least you think you do. So I looked it up. According to Merriam-Webster, the word 'recipe' comes from the word 'receipt' and is defined as: "A set of instructions for making something from various ingredients." Now I was very curious about what a receipt could possibly have to do with a great tasting cake. Some would say when you buy it at the store you get a receipt. Well, that’s only part of the story but not what I was looking for here. To understand the connection you need to go back to the 1500s when the word recipe becomes part of the English language. Up until this point, instructions for cooking or actually anything that needed a step by step set of instructions was called a receipt. Then in an unrelated event, there was much advancement in the field of medicine around the mid-1500s. One such advancement was a new word; this new word was recipe. It was used exclusively by a doctor to communicate in Latin to the pharmacists. Fast forward a few years and slowly the word recipe became associated with food. By the early 1800s, the two words had come into their own. A receipt was a list of items purchased at the store which is then used to make your favorite recipe. This still didn’t answer my original question though, "What are recipes?" To me, it’s more than a list of ingredients with instructions. I often think of homemade pound cake. There’s
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nothing better than a slice of pound cake still warm just out of the oven. Now you could go to one of a thousand websites that will have what they call the "Best Pound Cake Recipe Ever" or "Mom’s Easy Pound Cake Recipe" to name a couple. I could even walk out of my favorite grocery store with a fully baked presliced pound cake ready to eat. But I am looking for more than just a good pound cake. I need an experience. See, to me, a recipe is more of a story. I think about a memory of my mother baking a cake for a Saturday night fish fry where all the friends and family gathered around the fire pit. Recipes help make new memories as we share our creations with the people that are most important in our lives. It’s a way to share love with friends and family. As said perfectly by Pat Pedrosa, “Recipes are stories, glimpses of unforgettable moments between vulnerable hungry/thirsty people who are fed by love through the art of cooking. They are not just a list of ingredients and steps, no matter how many websites present them that way. Let’s not allow the internet to kill them: keep recipes alive by telling their stories.”
Get more from Doug Smith by following him on Facebook and Instagram at "Doug the Food Guy".