Cookbook:Manual of Style

Cookbook | Recipes | Ingredients | Equipment | Techniques | Cookbook Disambiguation Pages

This page describes the stylistic conventions that should be used for pages in the Cookbook. It is a living document, so it may change over time to reflect the de facto state of the Cookbook and the consensus standards created by its contributors.

Page Naming

Case

The de-facto naming convention for all Cookbook pages is title case. Based on common style guides, this means that the first word of the title as well as all major words (i.e. not articles, coordinating conjunctions, and prepositions shorter than four letters) should be capitalized.

Recipes

Language

Recipes should be titled according to their traditional name, their origin, or their ingredients. Avoid naming recipes for people, unless they are well-known by that name.

Recipes with a non-English name that have a common English name should be named with their common English name. For example, the primary name for Cookbook:Khaeng Keaw Wan should be Cookbook:Thai Green Curry. If necessary or desired, a redirect from the name in the original language can be created. In cases where the non-English name is the common name, that name should be used, as in Cookbook:Huevos Rancheros.

Recipes names with special characters (diacritics, etc) should be primarily spelled with simple ASCII characters and a redirect should be created with the special characters included.

Special Diets

Recipes for a special diet that are substantially adjusted variations of a normal recipe should be denoted by the diet name in parentheses after the name of the recipe. For example, a vegan variation of Cookbook:Chili would be Cookbook:Chili (Vegan); a gluten-free variation of Cookbook:Brownies would be Cookbook:Brownies (Gluten-Free); a lactose-free variation of Cookbook:Milkshake would be Cookbook:Milkshake (Lactose-Free). Recipes that adhere to a special diet, but are not variations for that specific diet should not be named in this fashion; instead only the appropriate category should be added. Trivial variations should be listed on the recipe page itself.

Duplicate Recipes and Disambiguation Pages

When there is more than one recipe for a single type of food, there are several ways to resolve the situation:

1. If one recipe is of poor quality, delete it.
2. If one recipe can be expressed as a variation upon the other, include it in the variations section and delete the original.
3. If the recipes can be merged into a single recipe, merge them and delete the originals.
4. Create a disambiguation page for the 'abstract' type of food (using the {{cookdp}} template as a header) and give each recipe a unique name.

In the last case, the distinguishing name should be as descriptive of the unique qualities of the recipe as possible. This may be accomplished in the following ways:

1. Variations: for example, a disambiguation page is Cookbook:Lasagne which links to Cookbook:Traditional Lasagne, Cookbook:Ricotta Lasagne, and Cookbook:Lasagne with bean sauce.
2. Roman numerals: If there is not an appropriately descriptive way to distinguish the recipes, roman numerals should be used, as in Cookbook:Hummus I.
3. Diet: if a recipe difference is noted by diet, proceed as above for special diets.
4. Author: if a recipe is from a specific author (e.g. from a book in the public domain), include their surname as in Cookbook:Common Sauce (Hartshorne).

Additionally, a disambiguation page may be created with more information about a type of food, and this page should link to the various recipes for that dish. See, for example, Cookbook:Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Categories

Most if not all pages in the Cookbook should be categorized according to their key characteristics. Avoid including fully redundant categories in the same page. For example, a Thai recipe should be classified under Category:Thai recipes but not Category:Southeast Asian recipes, since the former is already categorized within the latter. Additionally, when creating new categories, avoid crossing categories of different types—for example, the category "American dessert recipes" is inappropriate because it combines a geographic origin category with a course/type category. Instead, such a recipe should be categorized under Category:American recipes and Category:Dessert recipes. Otherwise, we could end up with an enormous number of category permutations.

Cookbook-related categories should capitalize the first but not following words. With few exceptions (e.g. maintenance categories), recipe categories should follow the "____ recipes" naming format:

• Category:Egg recipes (by ingredient)
• Category:Italian recipes (by origin)
• Category:Vegan recipes (by diet)
• Category:Cake recipes (by recipe type)
• Category:Dessert recipes (by meal type)

For ingredient categorization, a plural form is generally used, as with:

• Category:Fats and oils
• Category:Cheeses

Page Formatting and Layout

Recipes should be formatted according to the recipe template, and ingredients according to the ingredient template.