• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to secondary sidebar

Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food

Useful Tips, Interviews, and Stories to Inspire Food Writers and Bloggers

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Home
  • About Me
    • Bio
    • Freelance Writing
    • Media Mentions
    • Teaching and Speaking
    • Contact Me
  • Services
    • Coaching and Editing
    • Clients
    • FAQ
    • Testimonials
  • Books
    • Will Write For Food
    • The United States of Pizza
    • Grilled Pizzas & Piadinas
    • The Good Pantry
  • Events
  • Categories
    • Awards
    • Cookbooks
    • Career
    • Contests
    • Ethics
    • Food Blogging
    • Freelancing
    • Literary Agents
    • My workshops and conferences
    • Personal Stuff
    • Photography
    • Promotion
    • Proposals
    • Radio interviews and writing
    • Recipe Writing
    • Restaurant Reviewing
    • Self Publishing
    • Social Media
    • Travel Writing
    • Uncategorized
    • Useful Links
    • Writing
    • Memoir
    • Writing Apps
  • Resources
  • My Newsletter
  • Blog

recipe development

How I Write High-Performing Recipes for Food52.com

June 25, 2019 by diannejacob 4 Comments

photo of author of piece on writing high-performing recipes.

A guest post by Emma Laperruque

In the year and a half since I joined the Food52 staff as a writer and recipe developer, I’ve developed over 200 recipes — including some high-performing recipes. Many are for my column, Big Little Recipes, which is all about big flavor and little ingredient lists. The rest are ad hoc for the site. While this number is a small drop in our bucket of almost 50,000 recipes, every one taught me something about how to write a high-performing recipe in the digital age. [Read more…] about How I Write High-Performing Recipes for Food52.com

Filed Under: Recipe Writing Tagged With: Big Little Recipes, Emma Laperruque, Food52, high-performing recipe writing, recipe development

For Nik Sharma, Developing Recipes is All About Science

May 14, 2019 by diannejacob 2 Comments

Opening image for post on developing recipes.While a student at the University of Mumbai, studying biochemistry and microbiology, cookbook author and food writer Nik Sharma learned a process that he would eventually use for developing recipes. 

“We worked in a lab, doing medical research, ” he explains. “We were taught to make buffers or chemical solutions. The way it’s done is very similar to [Read more…] about For Nik Sharma, Developing Recipes is All About Science

Filed Under: Recipe Writing Tagged With: recipe development, recipe testing, Recipe Writing

What I Learned from Cook’s Illustrated about Recipe Development

October 9, 2018 by diannejacob 11 Comments

image for post on recipe developmentA guest post by Christine Gallary

I live and breathe recipe development all day long, creating them in my home kitchen for clients or working on other people’s recipes. I’m not kidding when I say that I’ve edited thousands of recipes.

I owe this recipe development career of mine, which I absolutely love and adore, to my stint at Cook’s Illustrated (CI) over 10 years ago. It was the best bootcamp experience ever on learning how to develop good, solid, replicable recipes. I started out as a naive intern who had just graduated from culinary school, but soon, recipe development became my full-time profession. [Read more…] about What I Learned from Cook’s Illustrated about Recipe Development

Filed Under: Recipe Writing Tagged With: Cook's Illustrated, creating good recipes, recipe development, testing recipes

Blogger Finds Famous Cookbook Recipe Doesn’t Work, but He’s Happy

July 7, 2015 by diannejacob 37 Comments

When a high-end cookbook recipe doesn’t work, how can this story have a happy ending? Somehow, it does.

First, a little backstory. Remember when Julie Powell started her career-changing food blog, The Julie/Julia Project, in 2002? It was about a government drone who makes every recipe from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking over a one-year period. Her blog led to the first blog-to-book deal and a subsequent movie.

After that, a whole bunch of people started blogs about [Read more…] about Blogger Finds Famous Cookbook Recipe Doesn’t Work, but He’s Happy

Filed Under: Career, Recipe Writing, Self Publishing Tagged With: Alinea cookbook, Allen Hemberger, Food blogging, recipe development, Recipe Writing

How 80 People Tested our Cookbook Recipes for Free

January 14, 2014 by diannejacob 32 Comments

Melt_Turkey and Robusto

Every recipe in Melt was tested four times by our band of recipe testers, including this one for Turkey and Robusto Mac and Cheeselets.

A guest post by Garrett McCord, co-author of Melt

One of the greatest fears of cookbook writers is that their readers — the people who have dedicated time, money, and ingredients –- will be unable to successfully execute the recipes. When Stephanie Stiavetti and I started working on Melt: The Art of Macaroni and Cheese, we resolved that recipes would be properly tested and that every single one would work flawlessly.

So how to go about this? Years ago I tested recipes for Jaden Hair’s first cookbook. Stephanie and I discussed the process and decided that the best way to test the book was with our blog readers. We put out a call on our [Read more…] about How 80 People Tested our Cookbook Recipes for Free

Filed Under: Cookbooks, Recipe Writing Tagged With: cookbooks, recipe development, recipe testing, Recipe Writing, writing cookbooks

Q&A: Doc Willoughby on Perfecting Recipes in America's Test Kitchen

April 10, 2012 by diannejacob 18 Comments

Twenty years of perfecting recipes. That’s how long America’s Test Kitchen has cooked, baked and obsessed over the results. Based in Brookline, MA, it’s the test kitchen for a PBS television show of the same name, where the staffs of Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country magazines work out their recipes.

How does the staff create a recipe that works every time? I asked John “Doc” Willoughby, the company’s executive editor for magazines. The Harvard grad began his career at Cook’s Illustrated when Chris Kimball founded the magazine in 1993. In 2001, he left to become executive editor at Gourmet magazine, then returned to America’s Test Kitchen in 2010. Willoughby, who writes cookbooks with co-author Chris Schlesinger, a chef, has written nine, including the award-winning The Thrill of the Grill.

Lori Galvin, executive editor of America’s Test Kitchen and a reader of this blog, sent me the company’s latest cookbook, Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook: 2,000 Recipes of 20 Years of America’s Most Trusted Food Magazine, and suggested I talk with Willoughby about the company’s process of developing and testing recipes:

Q. What do you do as executive editor of America’s Test Kitchen?

A. I’m in charge of the two magazines plus 24 special issues for newsstands. I follow along the process for each magazine, starting with ideas like, “Do readers want another roast beef recipe? If so, which kind?” Then we survey readers before doing an article.

Q. How much do you rely on readers for your content?

A. Once we decide what we want to do, we [Read more…] about Q&A: Doc Willoughby on Perfecting Recipes in America's Test Kitchen

Filed Under: Recipe Writing Tagged With: America's Test Kitchen, Cook's Illustrated, Food blogging, food writing, John (Doc) Willoughby, recipe development, recipe testing, Recipe Writing

Trouble for Two Recipe Adapters

February 28, 2012 by diannejacob 168 Comments

Food Network fired star Anne Thornton for adapting recipes a little too closely. (Photo: Food Network)

Yes, one of my favorite subjects was in the news again recently: the perils of adapting recipes. Here are two recent developments that affected a cooking show host and a food blogger:

1. Show cancelled because of adapting recipes. The Food Network cancelled the show of TV Chef Anne Thornton because she adapted recipes based on making small tweaks to the recipes of others, apparently.

Media outlets went crazy when the news hit that her show, Dessert First, was not renewed because many of her recipes were “plagiarized” from Martha Stewart and Ina Garten, specifically a German chocolate frosting and lemon bars.

“You take what you learn from them and then you riff on that,”she said in her defense in a story in the UK Daily Mail. “As for lemon squares, there’s only so many ways you can make them, so of course there will be similarities.”

Her comment sounds similar to those I’ve received on this blog. And I don’t necessarily disagree with [Read more…] about Trouble for Two Recipe Adapters

Filed Under: Ethics, Food Blogging, Recipe Writing Tagged With: Anne Thornton, Dan Leopard, Dessert First, Food blogging, food writing, recipe development, Recipe Writing

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

My Books








Awards and Honors


Will Write for Food 2022


Will Write For Food 2022


IACP Member of the Year 2022


Will Write For Food 2022


Will Write For Food 2020


Best Essay 2016


2016 Grand Prize
MFK Fisher Award
for Best Essay


Will Write For Food 2016


Will Write For Food 2016


Will Write For Food 2010


Best Essay 2007


Will Write For Food 2005

Member

Secondary Sidebar

Subscribe to my Free Monthly Newsletter on Food Writing Here

Food Blogger Pro Ad
Cookbook Publishing Course

Categories

  • Awards (17)
  • Career (72)
  • Contests (23)
  • Cookbooks (122)
  • Ethics (60)
  • Food Blogging (230)
  • Freelancing (54)
  • Literary Agents (12)
  • My workshops and conferences (35)
  • Personal Stuff (24)
  • Photography (7)
  • Promotion (27)
  • Proposals (10)
  • Recipe Writing (73)
  • Restaurant Reviewing (22)
  • Self Publishing (20)
  • Social Media (23)
  • Travel Writing (3)
  • Useful Links (23)
  • Writing (139)
    • Memoir (15)
  • Writing Apps (3)

Archives

Most Popular Posts

  • Adapting a Recipe Doesn’t Make it Yours 267 comments
  • New FTC Rules on Writing Reviews, Affiliations, and Sponsored Posts 266 comments
  • Is Food Blogging Too Much Work? 237 comments
  • Are You Making These 3 Mistakes on Your About Page? 206 comments
  • 5 Notes to Self for Coping with Conference Anxiety 203 comments
  • Food Bloggers Fight Firestorm of Abusive Facebook Pages 200 comments
  • Should Bloggers be Praised for Recipes They Don't Write? 198 comments

Copyright © 2023 · Dianne Jacob      Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2023 · Genesis Sample Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Get Dianne’s free newsletter on food writing and blogging delivered to your inbox!

Subscribe