What makes a recipe easy?

4.1 novelty, 4.2 inspiration, 4.3 modesty, 4.4 instruction, 4.5 context

Unfamiliarity

unfamiliar results

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Inspiration

Photographs: Given that cooking is at this stage in our history an entirely voluntary activity -- nobody in the United States has to cook who doesn't want to-- inspiration comes first in my criteria for what makes a recipe or a cookbook easy. If it doesn't get me fired up, I'm going to find myself bored; annoyed; burdened; and eventually, in the checkout line with a rotisserie chicken.

And what makes a cookbook inspiring? Nine times out of ten these days, it's photographs.

I used to feel ambivalent about how much I am influenced by food photography. After all, I started cooking when there were no photographs in cookbooks, or sometimes a few inset in a special glossy section. When I look at those photographs today, I am amazed that they didn't seem revolting when the books were first published. The food is obviously shellacked; the dominant colors are khaki, fawn, and puce; the plates are contextualized with elaborate, heavy napery, candelabras, and silver; the Shakespearian expression "funeral meats" comes readily to mind. In those days, a cookbook had to pull its weight by its words.

The cookbooks that enthralled me were Elizabeth David's (nasty little line drawings), Julia Child's (instructive drawings), James Beard's American Cookery (no illustrations), Roy Andries de Groot's Feasts for All Seasons (typographic sorts, the clip art of its day), Claudia Roden's A Book of Middle Eastern Food (no illustrations), Paula Wolfert's Couscous & Other Good Food from Morocco (instructive drawings, dreadful grainy b& w photos).

blah blah Diane Seed, Valentina Harris, blah blah

blah blah James McNair blah blah

blah blah Brits blah blah

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inspiration: informative titles and headnotes

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inspiration: favorite ingredients

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inspiration: text design

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instruction

writing: comprehensible components (sub in bought components)

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writing: clarity, accuracy, friendliness

OK, what exactly is clarity? A piece of writing is clear when it helps me understand something I wouldn't otherwise. Fair enough. But if I didn't understand it, how can I tell whether I now do? Maybe I still don't understand it.

So I can't judge clarity directly, but perhaps I can sidle up to it.

I could see whether it explains something I already understand in a way that I think would be helpful to someone who does not understand.

I could try to find such a person and watch whether understanding increases from reading the explanation.

I could see whether the explanation of something I partly understand makes me understand it better.

And of course I can tell when something is not clear when it explains something I already understand and makes me … understand it less?

On the contrary, reading something explained badly often helps me to understand it better.

Truth and clarity should be orthogonal:

	clarity	opacity
truth	clear and true	opaque and true
falsehood	clear and false	opaque and false

Ah, would that it were all so simple. If a text is sufficiently opaque, no one can tell whether it's true or not. (Usually including the author.)

But note that if I already understand something, reading a text of any of the four kinds, clear and true, clear and false, opaque and true, opaque and false, can help me understand it better. If I don't understand it, clear and true is the only thing that helps. Clear and false is treacherous – I'll start thinking I understand it, but I won't. Opaque and true, opaque and false – I still won't understand anything, and I'll be confused and angry to boot.

We can observe texts that are self-contradictory. Also texts with gaps.

"Clarity in writing basically means expressing yourself clearly."

"Clear writing indicates clear thinking." Not so, or everything well written would be right.

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apparatus: page design (pages or spreads), page turns, chapter design

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apparatus: clean typography (type size, dark type color, serif/sanserif)

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apparatus: glossary

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apparatus: cross-reference

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apparatus: ingredient list keyed to steps

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apparatus: index

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familiar ingredients

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short ingredient list

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inexact measurement (not everyone agrees)

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equivalent measures

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familiar methods

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few true steps

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timing: "until" plus minutes

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timing: lots of latitude in times

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go-withs and menu suggestions

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what the cook brings to it: skills, equipment, organization, concentration, environment, attitude

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Einstein alas did not say: "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." (He said something more complicated.) We have leagues still to go in the direction of simplicity.