Your Personal Kitchen Dictionary

by:
April  9, 2012

After you spend a while in the kitchen, you start to develop a personal repertoire of recipes and tips: your custom variation on classic pasta primavera, that delicious cocktail you invented by accident, the number of teaspoons in a packet of yeast (2 1/4). You could write all these down on paper or type them up in a Word document, sure, but good luck tracking them down later!

That's where this super-smart tip from The Kitchn comes in: use a Moleskine addressbook to alphabetically sort your recipes, references, and notes! The blank pages and A-Z tabs aren't just for phone numbers -- you'll be able to track down your favorite recipes at a glance. And as The Kitchn points out, the 4" x 6" size "makes it easy to carry along when you are staying at a vacation house or visiting family for the holidays."

Shop the Story

Smart Tip: Use an Address Book for Your Most-Referenced Recipes - The Kitchn

See what other Food52 readers are saying.

  • TheFritschKitchen
    TheFritschKitchen
  • AntoniaJames
    AntoniaJames
  • Kitchen Butterfly
    Kitchen Butterfly
Food52 (we cook 52 weeks a year, get it?) is a food and home brand, here to help you eat thoughtfully and live joyfully.

3 Comments

TheFritschKitchen April 10, 2012
I've been doing this about a year now with a pretty green photo album I bought for the purpose. I get a kick arranging the various recipes I've tried with my hand written notes on the pages and sorting them by category (soup, salad, meatless main, etc) It's also great for posting those every day quick facts you need: what cut of beef can substitute for another, what to do when you've run out of cream of tartar again....

Randomly enough, it's the backbone of my cooking blog - called My Big Green Cookbook - just a place to track recipes I've tried and which ones have made the cut and made in into my very own cookbook! (in case your interested... http://biggreencookbook.blogspot.com/)
 
AntoniaJames April 10, 2012
I can see how this would be perfect for (i) recipes for, and note and ideas about, spice rubs, marinades, spice pastes, spice blends (e.g., the spice mixture from Merrill's Saag Paneer, which has become my go-to Indian spice blend for the past year or so . . . the formula currently resides on a sticky-note inside a cabinet door), (ii) my current favorite new, not-committed to-memory bread recipes (abbreviated, of course); and (iii) ratios for pancakes, biscuits/scones, etc. I have been searching for the best system for organizing and making accessible this information. And I just happen to have a Levenger Circa address book – with replaceable inserts for each entry – that I’ve never used, as I store all of contact information on my laptop. Thanks for posting this! ;o)
 
Kitchen B. April 10, 2012
:-), I have an address book full of recipes from 1999 - boy am i smart :-). I also used another address book to index dutch words when I lived in the Netherlands and learnt Dutch