Write the Cookbook Manuscript, Recipe by Recipe

A recipe has a fixed anatomy, and readers notice when it breaks. The headnote comes first: a short paragraph on why the dish matters, where it comes from, and what to watch for. Then the yield and the times. Then the ingredient list, written in the order the ingredients are used, with the prepared form stated ("1 onion, finely chopped"). Then the method, one action per step, with the cues a cook can see or smell rather than only a time ("until the edges brown").

Consistency is the unglamorous convention. If the book says "tablespoon" once it cannot say "tbsp" later. Oven temperatures, pan sizes and units follow one style across every recipe, and many books give both metric and cup measures. A cookbook editor will have a style sheet, and a large share of their work is making hundreds of recipes follow it.

Then there is testing. Every recipe is cooked, usually more than once and often by testers in ordinary kitchens, and each test changes the recipe: a shorter time, less salt, a note about altitude. The manuscript has to track which version is current. Around the recipes sit the chapters (by course, season, ingredient or story), the introduction, a pantry section, and an index that is built at the very end.

1. Create one book for the cookbook. Add an Act for each section (Breakfasts, Weeknights, Baking) and rename it; each recipe is a chapter inside it, titled with the recipe name.
2. Write each recipe in the same order: headnote paragraph, a line for yield and times, the ingredients as a bullet list, the method as a numbered list.
3. Keep your style decisions in the Story Hub Glossary: how you write units, temperatures, pan sizes, and your spelling of dish names.
4. After each test, update the recipe and click Save Version Manually with a note in your testing log (a Free Notes page works). Compare Versions shows what changed between tests.
5. Invite testers with a Can comment link. The link opens the whole manuscript, so tell each tester which recipes to cook. They leave notes without an account, and the notes come into your Beta feedback inbox.
6. Ask Robin which recipes call for buttermilk, or where you explain how to brown butter, before you change the method in one place.
7. Run the Proofing Pass for spelling and grammar. Add ingredient names from other languages to your Personal Dictionary so they are not flagged.
8. Export a Word document for your editor, or for the designer who will lay out the book with the photographs.

• No photographs or images in the manuscript. Food photography is handled with your photographer and designer.
• No tables, so nutrition panels, conversion charts or side-by-side ingredient columns are prepared elsewhere.
• No recipe template, ingredient scaling or unit conversion. The structure of each recipe is the one you type.
• No page layout or index. PDF export is a fixed A4 reading copy, not print-ready cookbook pages.
• There is no fact-checking feature, and Robin cannot taste. It can tell you where the book says something, not whether the recipe works. Only testing does that.