[wlesieutre]

Even the quantities and order of preparation are not inherently copyrightable. Per parent comment's citation, where a recipe or formula is accompanied by substantial literary expression.

"Fill pitcher with water, add lemon juice and sugar" is not going to pass muster as "substantial literary expression".

But if I republished your 5 page story about how your grandma used to make this lemonade and you remember drinking it on the porch of her cottage on Cape Cod, then I would be infringing on your copyright.

Just the ingredients, quantities, and procedure explained in a factual manner is explicitly not copyrightable in the US:

> A recipe is a statement of the ingredients and procedure required for making a dish of food. A mere listing of ingredients or contents, or a simple set of directions, is uncopyrightable. As a result, the Office cannot register recipes consisting of a set of ingredients and a process for preparing a dish.

Your explanations of why a process is followed, and other supplemental information beyond the instructions, can be copyrightable.

[sandworm101]

Substantial literary expression is old law, written when software was poorly understood by courts. Proceedures are now regularly copyrightable. They will find expression somewhere, even in a typo or apparant error (see the old phonebook and map cases). While one can pull and copy the facts, verbatum copying of every minutia is very dangerous.

Remember that a recipe isn't just an instruction set for making food. For purposes of copyright it is also letters on a page generated by a person.