A recipe is a set of instructions that show how to prepare or make something, especially a culinary dish.

Modern culinary recipes normally consist of several components:

* The name (and often the locale or provenance) of the dish
* How much time it will take to prepare the dish
* The required ingredients along with their quantities or proportions
* Equipment and environment needed to prepare the dish
* An ordered list of preparation steps
* The number of servings that the recipe will provide
* the texture and flavour

Some recipes will note how long the dish will keep and its suitability for freezing. Nutritional information, such as calories per serving and grams of protein, fat, and carbohydrates per serving, may also be given.

Earlier recipes often included much less information, serving more as a reminder of ingredients and proportions for someone who already knew how to prepare the dish.

Recipe writers sometimes also list variations of a traditional dish, to give different tastes of the same recipes.

A dish in gastronomy is a specific food preparation, a “distinct article or variety of food”[1], ready to eat.

Dish (food)

A “dish” may be served on dishware, or may be eaten out of hand; but breads are generally not called “dishes”.

Instructions for preparing a dish are called recipes. Some dishes, e.g. vanilla ice cream with fudge sauce, rarely have their own recipes (and are not found in cookbooks), as they are made by simply combining two preparations.

Naming

Many dishes have specific names (e.g. Sauerbraten), while others are simply described (”broiled ribsteak”). Many are named for particular places, sometimes because of a specific association with that place (Boston baked beans), sometimes not (”alla fiorentina” ends up meaning essentially “with spinach”). Many are named for particular individuals, perhaps to honor them, perhaps because the dish was first prepared for them, perhaps they themselves invented the dish, perhaps because the dish was invented in their kitchens; because of the high level of culinary mythology, it is often hard to tell the difference among these cases.

“This article is brought to you by Gus Woltmann”.