Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A set of directions with a list of ingredients for making or preparing something, especially food.
  • noun A formula for or means to a desired end.
  • noun A medical prescription.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Take: a Latin imperative used (commonly abbreviated R. or ℞) at the beginning of physicians' prescriptions, as formerly and in part still written in Latin.
  • noun A formula for the compounding of a remedy, with directions for its use, written by a physician; a medical prescription.
  • noun A prescribed formula in general, but especially one having some relation or resemblance to a medical prescription; a receipt.
  • noun Synonyms Receipt, etc. See reception.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A formulary or prescription for making some combination, mixture, or preparation of materials; a receipt.
  • noun archaic a prescription for medicine.
  • noun archaic a prescription for medicine.
  • noun a set of directions for preparing food from its ingredients.
  • noun a method or procedure for accomplishing a goal by defined steps; -- implying a high probability of achieving the goal. Also used in a negative sense, .

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun directions for making something

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin, sing. imperative of recipere, to take, receive; see receive.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin recipiō ("receive"). Compare receipt.

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Examples

  • This recipe is a modification of the pumpkin bisque recipe from the Professional Chef, with a bit of advice from Irene.

    Butternut Squash Soup with Fried Sage Leaves aka TBTAM 2007

  • Just last night I made a pork tenderloin recipe from the most recent issue.

    Goodbye, 'Gourmet' magazine | EW.com 2009

  • Paul Romer has used the word recipe to describe this mix.

    Michael Moynihan: The Secret Sauce of Economic Growth Michael Moynihan 2011

  • Paul Romer has used the word recipe to describe this mix.

    Michael Moynihan: The Secret Sauce of Economic Growth Michael Moynihan 2011

  • I am not a fan of the 500 Cupcakes book (I think its b/c I substitute AP flour for the self-rising flour?) but glad that the muffin recipe is yummy.

    Good Morning Muffins 2008

  • Haha, anyways - all silliness aside, my standard bran muffin recipe is proving to be incredibly versatile these days!

    Archive 2008-12-01 Sarah 2008

  • Again recipe is generally the same yet we tend to brown the flour a bit more which gives it more flavor.

    Cream of the gravy crop | Homesick Texan Homesick Texan 2007

  • Pretend Soup is to credit for (re) introducing Ian to beans (bean and cheese quesadillas), getting him to try a banana for the first time in 3 years (the title recipe, pretend soup) and encouraging Ian to sound excited about vegetables (his actual consumption of vegetables lags behind his enthusiasm for reading recipes about them, but hopefully the gap will close over time).

    Reading, Writing, Cooking and Crafting: Honest Pretzels Kate 2005

  • Pretend Soup is to credit for (re) introducing Ian to beans (bean and cheese quesadillas), getting him to try a banana for the first time in 3 years (the title recipe, pretend soup) and encouraging Ian to sound excited about vegetables (his actual consumption of vegetables lags behind his enthusiasm for reading recipes about them, but hopefully the gap will close over time).

    Archive 2005-11-01 Kate 2005

  • Ratatouille, the 2007 animated feature about a gastronomically gifted rat, saw him refining the title recipe for the computer animators by thinly slicing the vegetables rather than dicing them, then fanning them upward on the plate.

    The Globe and Mail - Home RSS feed 2009

Comments

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  • A 1783 (not really) recipe (not really) for salt cake, seen here.

    October 7, 2008

  • Eliza "Acton liked to keep it simple and slow; she transformed the written recipe not only with her exact quantities and detailed instructions on things like boning and trussing but, also for the very first time, with closing summaries of all the ingredients needed and the time that each one would take to complete.*

    *Listing ingredients at the foot of a recipe, when you think about it, makes sense, since it assumes that the recipe itself has been read thoroughly first. It was Isabella Beeton who copied Acton's innovation but moved the list to the beginning, giving us, finally, the form of the modern recipe."

    --Kate Colquhoun, Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking (NY: Bloomsbury, 2007), 281 and n.

    January 18, 2017

  • "The mortar, an emblem of sophisticated cooking in the Middle Ages because of its use in grinding spices, has remained the preeminent symbol of pharmacists, just as the word 'recipe' in most languages means both instructions for cooks and prescriptions for druggists, a reminder of the conceptual similarity fo the two professions."

    Paul Freedman, Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2008), 67

    November 28, 2017