Should Recipes Shrink to 140 Characters on Twitter?
"What about your bubbe's borscht recipe? Didn't she probably squeeze it onto an index card in roughly 140 characters?"
Twitter user @cookbook condenses recipes to 140 characters or fewer.
Recipe from a 1950s Gourmet cookbook, for sale on etsy.com, is definitely more than 140 characters.
Can a recipe be only 140 characters long? Sure, you could cram in short-hand terms for liter (l) and olive oil (olvoil), but is it truly a recipe? Many people, including the entire cookbook industry, would argue no. Using Twitter as a platform to share shrunken recipes—which @cookbook has proven can attract over 15,000 followers—strips the recipe of its headnote, its hand-holding instructions, and its soul, some would argue. It's like showing the credits to a movie without the actual movie, argued Fatty Crab chef-owner Zak Pelaccio at last night's "Recipe, Replication, Innovation" lecture at the Institute for Public Knowledge in Manhattan.
The conversation mainly focused on Twitter, which has allowed haiku-like phrases, mashing up garbled code for mint pea soup or pureed turnips, to pose as recipes. Maybe it's less touching than one from Julia Child with an aside on blanching and pairing tips, but it's also free, and less heavy.
New York Times food columnist and frequent tweeter Amanda Hesser (@amandahesser) was the lone Twitter cheerleader on the panel. She noted the compelling voyeurism of watching people's dinner plans unfold online, and the ability to crowd source for real-time kitchen help. But an opposing argument echoed: "I'd rather call up my mom than send these Twitter things."
Twitter bashing went on for a while, led by a few popular points. The recipe loses the experiential component when it's so abbreviated. Where is the joy and journey?! It becomes a code that could be created by robots!
But one guy raised his hand and made a good point. What about your bubbe's borscht recipe? Didn't she probably squeeze it onto an index card in roughly 140 characters? Does that make it soulless?
No, because Bubbe rules, but Twitterified recipes on the other hand lack context, Pelaccio argued. Your grandma, as opposed to random Holly the Homemaker online, probably handed you the recipe after telling you about the Eastern European beet fields and how badly she had once burned her tongue on the soup. The general consensus was that passed-down recipes take on a totally different, usually scrappier, form than cookbook recipes, but are still less evil than the Twitter versions.
But sometimes there's a happy medium between old and new media. Take Sullivan Street Bakery owner Jim Lahey's No-Knead Bread recipe, originally printed in the New York Times in 2006. People e-mailed the article like crazy, giving it viral wings all over the world. After Mark Bittman pored over reader's comments and suggestions, he wrote a second piece in 2008, answering the demand for a faster approach and one with whole-wheat. Though originally born into old media, the recipe jumped off the page.
Bacon Explosion is another example of a recipe going viral, but it experienced the reverse order. Beginning on a food blog, it felt a domino effect of clicks, eventually appearing in the New York Times.
"It sounds interesting, I guess," said Pelaccio of what technology like Twitter can do. Admitting to Internet dumbness seems to be a bragging right for chefs, as if to say, these hands are for cutting pork belly, not tapping on keys. "Maybe one day I'll be able to lick my screen," he joked, clearly about to have a nervous breakdown if that ever happened.
Clarkson Potter senior editor Rica Allannic, also a champion of the ink-on-paper recipe, reminisced about her childhood adoration for a jacket-less Gourmet cookbook. It was falling apart so much, the pancake recipe dangled inside on a loose sheet. The whole room nodded, as if they too had lovingly abused the book.
I think everyone can agree that if book shelves were lined with screenshots of 140-character recipes, the world would be sad. But typing "pancakes" into a computer is just so much easier than laminating that crumb of a page hiding somewhere you can't find at the moment.
Add a comment:
Previewing your comment:
HTML Hints
Some HTML is OK: <a href="URL">link</a>, <strong>strong</strong>, <em>em</em>
Comment Guidelines
Post whatever you want, just keep it seriously about eats, seriously. We reserve the right to delete off-topic or inflammatory comments. Learn more at our Comment Policy page.
If you see something not so nice, please, report an inappropriate comment.
15 Comments:
I like recipes that tell me everything I need to know, and include stuff I do not need to know as well.
CatBoy at 2:12PM on 06/18/09
I feel like there are two different "new tech" arguments here. There's twitter recipes, and there's internet recipes. There's a difference that seems to be muddled based on this report. Cookbooks may be old technology, but the internet doesn't demand you read 140 character recipes. Many recipes devised by blog authors and posted for free on the internet include plenty of backstory and tips and such. (And I think Bubbe probably had more than 140 characters to write out on an index card... unless it was a *really* tiny card)
dinosara at 2:22PM on 06/18/09
Love Twitter and all things social media/social networking*, hate the idea of tweeting recipes. It ain't broke. Don't try to fix it.
*Really, I'm a geek. I could have called myself "Canadianfoodiegeek" but wanted identify my gender.
CanadianFoodieGirl at 2:24PM on 06/18/09
yeah, what @CatBoy said! :)
kristygarr at 2:24PM on 06/18/09
Amen. I was a bit dismayed by the Twitter-bashing at the discussion. Twitter is just a new technology, not the end of the world as we know it. It's as if the same Twitter-detractors circa 1890's were saying "eew, there's nothing that I could say on a telephone that I couldn't write in a letter! It's a bad invention!" Perhaps 140 characters is too short to fully transmit a recipe; but there's more than one way to roast a chicken, and there's more than one way to learn how to do it. It's best not to confuse the medium with the message.
I think there's a lot of anxiety floating around in the print media world about the loss of authority to Internet sources. It's understandable (and trust me, as a journalist I am no "death-to-mainstream-media" doomsdayer) but a bit short sighted. Just because anyone can say anything on the Internet doesn't mean people have lost the ability to recognize quality.
mslaas at 2:59PM on 06/18/09
I think the Twitter recipes are awesome for advanced cooks who can fill in the gaps with their expertise, and want to play. Beginning cooks, yeah, or people who need to be 100% sure of what you're getting, stick with the full version. Twitter recipes don't threaten the existence of conventional cookbooks, or your grandma's borscht. Cookbook authors should be a lot more concerned about Epicurious.
I don't really use Twitter but I fail to see how its existence hurts me, as a cook or a person or lover of all things food. Why the hate?
jm chen at 3:16PM on 06/18/09
Like many things, there are good Twitter recipes and there are bad Twitter recipes. Abbreviating a recipe to the point of obscurity is much different than a simple, inspirational recipe expressed in 140 characters. More along these lines here.
rodmitch at 6:56PM on 06/18/09
Hey, when you asked my grandmother for a recipe she'd write down the ingredients. No measurements. No instructions. Back then grandma figured everyone knew the basics so no need for the rest.
Twitter is kind of like that too.
CJ McD at 8:57PM on 06/18/09
twitter recipes are not necessary but the challenge sounds fun , not practical.
meatmanmike at 9:01PM on 06/18/09
i'm still trying to figure twitter out....
pooch at 9:34PM on 06/18/09
When I adopt a recipe into my collection, I always reformat it. I like to minimize the wording and create discrete steps. Often, the instructions are written in paragraph style. That can be nice when you are first reading the recipe. When I'm actually making it, I like to be able to read a step and know what all I should be doing at that one moment. Then look up the next step. As opposed to searching through a paragraph of text each time.
This kind of takes the concept even further...making it really really minimal.. It is kind of similar to what Michael Chu does on Cooking for Engineers. Except in text form instead of visual flowchart style.
@pooch: Twitter is not complicated. It is simply blogging where every post is limited to 140 characters. This makes it good for constant small updates, as opposed regular blog posts that are usually longer, journal-styled, and content-filled. The social networking aspect of it makes it sort of like texting everyone you know (or at least that you know on twitter).
wunami at 12:05AM on 06/19/09
I'm already tryin' to use Twitter on my food-blog account (@cuisinedefabien) to re-wrote my old recipes (or promote new ones) in 140 characters and the experiment seems successful... I've also wrote a guide on my blog to let people know what are the abbreviations I use and to provide a standard template since this is not so popular yet in Italy (and btw English is much helpful for food abbreviations).
I'm enjoying this Twitter opportunity a lot and I hope that a lot of food passionates will do the same in the near future :)))
fabien at 8:32AM on 06/19/09
there are peeps who thought food blogging was somehow less legitimate than print recipes/criticism, too. ;)
when a restaurant gets reviewed by Serious Eats AND the NYT, i don't feel the need to choose one--i read them both, and feel more informed by their different points of view. having more than one medium on the same subject means more perspectives, and a fuller picture.
Twitter recipes are the same schtick. Frankly, those who are skilled in crafting 140-character recipes don't need to be legitimized by those who feel that their recipes are more real.
At their best, Twitcipes are kinda gorgeous, playful, distilled pockets of mystery that can reveal someone who really knows their way around the kitchen. it's FUN to read a haiku on risi e bisi, and fun to try and use it to produce a meal! frankly, anything that brings a fresh angle on what we eat is a good thing.
As much as I enjoy the touchy-feely, narrative-driven species of recipe that sells cookbooks and drives cooking blogs, I don't think food lovers have to choose between those recipes and Twitcipes, or say that one has more soul than another.
Print recipes, blog recipes, and Twitter recipes all have a role to play in communicating to each other the joys of breaking bread, and how to duplicate the experience. Eaters need not be threatened by new mediums. ;)
effingfoodie at 2:12PM on 06/19/09
why the hell would anyone want to use twitter to post/send/read recipes? it seems like trying to shoehorn something into the hot medium of the moment when there is no reason to do so. seriously, is it just to get your recipes greater exposure since people are obsessed with twitter right now?
sloppy at 2:44PM on 06/19/09
Hello! I write @cookbook on twitter; thought I'd pipe in. It should go without saying that 'twecipes' aren't meant to replace recipes. As others say, they're meant to be a challenge. Grandmas are frequent fans of the genre, which cuts to the chase of cooking, and leaves room for creative interpretation -- dice or slice the carrot? How finely to puree the soup? They're definitely most useful for those who already know their way around an onion. The idea that I'm in search of fame is quite funny. I've been doing this since twitter's obscurity (my partner built the site) sending recipes to my nerdy friends. I'm also a poet by career, so -- no horn required -- the shoe fit and I wore it. There is no scheme behind me. In general, twitter's food community seems quite genuine, and there is little reason to be cynical about it. Like this site, it's overall about new forms of culinary inspiration!
cookbook at 6:58AM on 06/23/09