[Sca-cooks] Favorite Cookbook Layouts

[Audrey Bergeron-Morin]

> I like the ingredients listed first, to facilitate shopping lists!

And I like the ingredients listed in the order in which they are used.
I don't always take out everything before I start - not enough counter
space. And when someone's helping you, he/she can get the ingredients
ready as you go.

> One format I have found rarely has been a dual list of measurements for each
> ingredient;  British/Metric on one side, America/ounces/cups/etc. on the
> other.

That's pretty standard in Quebec, at least. 1 cup (250 mL) flour, for
example. I almost never see them in grams, though. I like to work in
mL, it makes scaling a recipe much easier. I'd probably enjoy working
in weights, too, but it would mean another piece of equipment to find
space for on the counter. I think we don't even have a meter wide of
free counter as it is...

> Any format that can lie flat is good; properly bound books may look prettier
> on the shelf but a book's true virtue lies not on the shelf but in my hands!

Spiral bound are my favourite, because usually one recipe fits on one
page so you can fold the unused part of the book behind the recipe -
reduces used space and it's one less page to get dirty (except the
page you're working on, of course!).

I prefer to cook from magazines, though...

As for medieval recipes... it needs the original, ideally on the same page.