Recipe Notes in Plain Text: A Simple System for Cooks

Recipe websites and apps come and go. A folder of plain-text recipes stays yours, opens anywhere and never asks you to sign in.

Why keep recipes in text

• Fast to open, even with floury hands and a phone propped up.
• Easy to edit when you tweak a recipe.
• Searchable. Search for an ingredient across your files.
• Portable. The file can go anywhere.
• Yours. No one can remove or change it.

A simple template

Title: Tomato soup
Serves: 4
Time: 40 min

Ingredients
- 800 g tomatoes
- 1 onion
- 2 cloves garlic
- 500 ml stock

Method
1. Chop onion and garlic and soften in oil.
2. Add tomatoes and stock.
3. Simmer for 25 minutes.
4. Blend and season.

Notes
- Add basil at the end.
- Better the next day.

Tips

1. Keep a consistent layout, so you know where to look.
2. Write quantities clearly, with units.
3. Add a "Notes" section for changes you make: "used less salt", "needs 5 min more".
4. Record the source, such as "from Grandma" or a book title.
5. Date your changes if you refine a recipe over time.

Naming files

Use clear names: tomato-soup.txt, banana-bread.txt. Keep them in one folder, or group into sub-folders like soups, bakes and dinners.

Scaling a recipe

Write the base quantity, then note how to scale: "double for 8". Or write a small table:

Serves	Tomatoes	Stock
4	800 g	500 ml
8	1.6 kg	1 litre

Meal planning

Keep a plain list of the week's dinners, and copy ingredients into a shopping list.

Cooking with your phone

Check whether your phone lets you keep the screen awake while you cook, and choose a text size you can read at arm's length.

Sharing

You can copy a recipe into a message and send it to a friend, with no formatting problems.

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