A cookbook manuscriptrecipe development, testing rounds and headnotes for a proposal

Method

1. 1

   Give your assistant the notebook

   Make a shelf named for the book and write a line on what it is: “Sixty braises for weeknights, for cooks with one heavy pot.” Then give the assistant you use what you have so far: photos of the notebook pages, your draft recipe files, the testers’ emails. Ask it to make one document per recipe on that shelf, titled with the dish and its main ingredients, such as Chicken thighs braised with leeks and cider.

   Each document’s overview should be the latest version of the recipe exactly as you wrote it, and each test so far a finding. Ask for a Proposal document too, with a finding per section your literary agent expects: The book, The reader, Comparable titles, Chapter outline, Sample recipes. The assistant makes the headings; the pitch is yours to write.

2. 2

   Fix up each recipe in the editor

   Open each recipe and press Edit. Check the overview against your latest notes: yield, ingredients by weight and volume, method, and the timings you actually used. The overview is the recipe; the findings are its history. When you change the recipe, edit the overview directly. Revisions keep every earlier version, dated and marked as yours or an assistant’s.

   Drag the rounds into date order, fix any test the assistant misread, and delete what does not belong. Star the recipes going into the proposal, and put the one in testing this week in Focus.

3. 3

   Log every test as a finding

   After each test, give your assistant your notes and the testers’ replies and ask it to file the round in that recipe’s document, titled by round and date, Round 3, 11 March, as Evidence, with the same three headings every time:

   • What changed: one or two changes from the last round, and why.
   • What happened: times, temperatures, texture and taste, in plain words.
   • Testers: what each tester reported, by code (Tester B, gas oven, Denver), never by full name.

   Read the round before you plan the next one. Change one thing per round where you can; when you change two, say so.

4. 4

   Send testers the current version behind a password

   When a recipe is ready for testers, press Share on its document, set a password and an expiry at the end of the round, and copy the link the moment it appears. From each finding’s own page, leave out the round logs, the Decisions and the headnote draft, so testers read the recipe and nothing else. Add one finding they do see, How to report back, with the questions you want answered.

   Testers reply by email or your feedback form; they cannot write in the library. Their answers go into that round’s finding, by you or your assistant. For the next round, Replace the link, so last round’s testers lose access, and send the new one to this round’s. Replacing resets the expiry and the findings you left out, so set both again.

5. 5

   Ask your assistant to compare rounds

   Ask your assistant to read two rounds of a named recipe and the overview’s revisions, and to file a comparison: what changed, what the testers reported, and where they disagree. Ask it to file that as a finding, not to edit the recipe.

   An assistant is good at the bookkeeping you skip at eleven at night: noticing that the two testers who found the sauce thin both used a wider pot, or that round four quietly undid a fix from round two. Whether the braise is right is still for your palate to decide.

6. 6

   File the decisions

   When testing settles something, file a Decision and mark it Key: “Bone-in thighs, not boneless: boneless dried out for three of four testers.” Link the rounds that decided it. A Decision is what you will point to when a copy editor asks why the recipe calls for a 5-quart pot and not a 7.

   Then write the headnote yourself, as its own finding, in your own voice. Headnotes are the part of a cookbook that is most clearly yours and most clearly protected; they are also the part readers remember.

7. 7

   Check the manuscript before it goes out

   Before the proposal goes to your literary agent, search Look up for each main ingredient. If leeks fills the list and fennel finds nothing, the book has a habit. Ask your assistant to check every recipe document on the shelf for units written two ways, oven temperatures without °C, and a missing Contains line.

   Share the proposal with its own password and an expiry. When the book is under contract, read what the contract says about recipes appearing online before publication, and turn off tester links the day a round ends.