[bschwindHN]

Sorry to link to another project, but when I think of engineers and recipes, I can only think of "Cooking for Engineers". Here's an example of the kind of diagrams they use:

http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/185/Nestle-Toll-Ho...

I would also recommend killing all the social media buttons on your site and replacing them with simple links. Your site loads a ton of garbage from facebook, instagram, pinterest, etsy.

The site also feels quite slow, has flickers of unstyled content before the page loads, and overall feels quite "busy" for a recipe site.

[wonderbore]

I thought I'd like that table, but in practice reading it is awful, it takes too long to actually match the subjects to the actions, which tells a lot about the state of "UI by engineers"

If one wants to list the ingredients once, at least make it vertical and add some arrows:

    butter            -> soften
                            |
    sugar                   v
    brown sugar     --->  beat
    vanilla extract         |
                            v
    eggs      ---> beat in one egg at a time

    etc

Arrows point to a mixing point, plus an additional action. Reading it is simple:

    1. First take the butter and soften
    2. Then take the sugar/vanilla and beat it
    3. Then add eggs one at a time. 

I never have to move my eyes to the top of the instructions again, like you would have to do with a table where distinguishing each steps leads your eyes to follow the lines until the list.

The only advantage of that table is that preparing two mixes at once is easier than this.

[CoastalCoder]

Okay, I think it's time to throw down about that cookie recipe [0].

Better version:

- Use 1 c. white sugar + 1/2 c. brown sugar, rather than 3/4 + 3/4

- Reduce flour to 2-1/4 cups. And make sure it's white, or else you'll need to tweak the recipe further.

- Don't actively soften the butter with a microwave, because you'll probably overshoot and end up with flat cookies. Better to just let it come up to room temperature.

- Optional: Refrigerate the dough before making the balls. It's easier to work with, and it helps you avoid flattened cookies.

- The baking time isn't necessarily 10 minutes. Start checking them at 9 minutes, and use your eyes and nose to judge doneness. (It takes practice to calibrate.)

[0] Smacktalk intended for humor purposes only. But I'm 100% confident in my recipe's superiority :)

[bschwindHN]

Hah I'm sure yours is better, I'm just more interested in the format of the recipe itself (I just picked a random recipe on the site for an example).

I wonder if your recipe would fit well in that "timeline box" recipe card format, with all the caveats on how to prepare butter or optionally refrigerate the dough.

[stevage]

This was my attempt at this problem, many years ago: https://stevebennett.me/2010/11/26/introducing-cooking-for-e...

[bschwindHN]

Oh this is nice too! It took a bit of time to visually parse it but I would guess this allows for a lot more flexibility in expressing the actions, and where they occur. I like the dedicated lanes for each cooking dish, reminds me of network diagrams :)

[IndrekR]

Came to the comments to link that. Michael Chu’s Cooking for Engineers was fantastic back when it was still kept up to date.

[pacaro]

I use a similar format for recipes, happy to see that others have also reached the same place, it just feels intuitive to me