# Turn Any Recipe Into CKL **This page is written for an AI assistant.** Copy the whole thing into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or any other assistant, then give it your recipe — as typed text, a photo of a cookbook page, a screenshot, or a PDF. It will ask you about anything the original recipe leaves vague and hand back a finished file you can submit at [cookbook.edeny.dev/contribute/](https://cookbook.edeny.dev/contribute/). If you are a human reading this: you do not need to understand any of it. Skip to [the contribute page](https://cookbook.edeny.dev/contribute/) and follow the three steps there. --- ## Your task You are converting a recipe into **CKL** (Culinary Knowledge Language), the notation behind The Cook Book. Your output is a single `.ckl.md` file. CKL exists because ordinary recipes are ambiguous. "Cook the chicken until done", "season to taste", "a splash of oil" — these carry real information in a cook's head and none on the page. CKL refuses to accept them. Every quantity, time, and temperature is a number with a unit. That means **you will be missing information**, and the single most important thing you do is *ask the person for it rather than inventing it*. A fabricated oven temperature in a recipe someone else will cook is worse than no recipe. ### How to work 1. **Read the recipe.** If it is an image or PDF, transcribe it first and show the person your transcription so they can catch OCR mistakes. 2. **List what is missing or vague.** Work through the checklist in [What to ask about](#what-to-ask-about) below. 3. **Ask — all at once, numbered, in plain language.** Not an interrogation spread over ten turns. Offer a sensible default with each question so the person can say "all defaults are fine" and be done. > 3. The recipe says "a knob of butter" — roughly how much? (I'll assume > **30 g** if you're not sure.) 4. **Say which numbers you assumed** after they answer, so nothing is silently invented. 5. **Write the file**, then **check it** against [Before you hand it over](#before-you-hand-it-over). 6. **Output the complete file in one code block** so it can be copied in a single click. Use a **four-backtick** fence — the file contains a three-backtick block of its own — and keep all commentary outside it. ### What to ask about - **Vague amounts** — "a pinch", "to taste", "a splash", "1 large onion", "2 cloves garlic". CKL needs mass or volume. Convert common items yourself (1 medium onion ≈ 150 g, 1 garlic clove ≈ 5 g, 1 large egg ≈ 50 g) and *say that you did*; ask when it genuinely matters. - **Missing temperatures** — "medium heat", "a hot pan", "moderate oven". Ask, and offer the usual value (medium ≈ 160 °C, medium-high ≈ 190 °C, moderate oven ≈ 180 °C). - **Missing times** — "until golden", "until fragrant", "until tender". Ask for a rough number. Keep the visual cue in the `## Notes` section; it is useful to a cook even though CKL will not accept it as an instruction. - **Doneness for meat and fish** — always ask how they check it. Poultry has a hard minimum (see [Food safety](#food-safety)). - **Servings** — required, and often unstated. - **Equipment** — pan size, pot size, whether an oven is involved. - **Prep vs. cook time** — for the file's frontmatter. Do **not** ask about: the intro paragraph, the tags, or the notes. Write those yourself from what you have. --- ## The file you produce ````markdown --- title: Classic Bruschetta description: Grilled bread rubbed with garlic and topped with fresh tomato and basil tags: italian, appetizer, vegetarian prepTime: 10 cookTime: 5 --- # Classic Bruschetta Simple, vibrant, and fresh — thick slices of bread grilled until charred, rubbed with raw garlic, and crowned with ripe diced tomatoes, basil, and the best olive oil you have. ## Recipe ```ckl servings 4 ingredient "bread" 300g ingredient "tomato" 300g ingredient "garlic" 10g ingredient "basil" 8g ingredient "olive oil" 40ml ingredient "salt" 3g pan "grill pan" 28cm knife "chef's knife" cut "bread" style slice size 15mm cut "tomato" style dice size 8mm cut "garlic" style crush # Toss the diced tomato with basil, olive oil, and salt toss "tomato" "basil" with "olive oil" "salt" # Toast the bread slices until charred on both sides toast "bread" in pan at 220C for 4min # Rub the warm bread with the crushed garlic season "bread" with "garlic" assemble "tomato" "basil" on "bread" rest 1min ``` ## Notes - Use the ripest tomatoes you can find — this dish lives or dies by them - Assemble just before serving so the bread does not go soggy ```` ### Frontmatter rules The frontmatter reader is a plain `key: value` line splitter, **not** YAML. | Field | Required | Notes | |---|---|---| | `title` | yes | Plain text, one line, no quotes, no brackets | | `description` | yes | One line, under 160 characters. It is the card subtitle | | `tags` | recommended | Bare comma-separated list: `tags: italian, pasta`. **Never** `tags: [italian, pasta]` — the brackets end up in the tag names | | `prepTime` | recommended | Whole minutes, digits only: `prepTime: 10` | | `cookTime` | recommended | Whole minutes, digits only | No other fields are read. No nesting, no YAML lists, no quoted values, and never a line break inside a value. ### The rest of the file - `# Title` matching the frontmatter title. - One or two paragraphs of prose. Say what the dish is and what makes it good. Write like a cookbook, not like documentation. - `## Recipe` containing exactly one ` ```ckl ` block. - `## Notes` with 2–5 bullets. **This is where the doneness cues go** — "until the edges are lacy and brown", "the sauce should coat the back of a spoon", along with substitutions and make-ahead advice. CKL carries the numbers; the notes carry the judgement. There is **no syntax for a visual or tactile doneness cue** and you should not invent one. `until golden_edges` and `until soft_center` are not valid CKL and never will be — how a bake looks depends on the pan, the oven and the sugar, so the language states the time and temperature that control it and leaves the appearance to prose. A baked recipe should carry a note saying what to look for, phrased for a cook standing at the oven: > **What to look for at the end:** golden rims, a centre that still looks > slightly wet and gives when pressed. It will not look done. It is done. The one place a qualitative endpoint *is* valid CKL is where it ends an action you control continuously — `cream ... until fluffy`, `mix ... until smooth`, `reduce ... until nappe` — and only using a word from the fixed lists in this guide. --- ## The CKL language Inside the ` ```ckl ` block, **every line must begin with a keyword**, or be blank, or be a `#` comment. There is no prose. A single bad line fails the whole file. ### Values | Kind | Form | Examples | |---|---|---| | Ingredient name | **double-quoted string** | `"chicken breast"`, `"olive oil"` | | Equipment / stage reference | **bare identifier** | `pan`, `pot`, `oven`, `bowl`, `zabaione` | | Equipment name | **double-quoted string** | `"cast iron skillet"` | | Number + unit | digits, **no space** before the unit | `500g`, `180C`, `6min`, `28cm` | | Comment | `#` to end of line | `# Rest before slicing` | **The twelve units are the only ones that exist:** `g`, `kg`, `ml`, `l`, `C`, `min`, `s`, `cloves`, `cm`, `mm`, `times`, `additions`. The last two are counts, used only by `tap` and `add` (see [Baking and pastry](#baking-and-pastry)). There are no cups, tablespoons, ounces, pounds, Fahrenheit, hours, or "each". Convert everything: - 1 cup flour ≈ 120 g · 1 cup water ≈ 240 ml · 1 tbsp ≈ 15 ml · 1 tsp ≈ 5 ml - 1 oz ≈ 28 g · 1 lb ≈ 454 g - °F → °C: subtract 32, multiply by 5/9, then **round to a sensible number** (350 °F → 175 °C, not 176.66667C) - 1 hour 30 minutes → `90min` - Count items → mass: 1 medium onion ≈ 150 g, 1 carrot ≈ 70 g, 1 garlic clove ≈ 5 g, 1 large egg ≈ 50 g, 1 egg yolk ≈ 18 g Temperatures are **always Celsius**. Times are **always minutes** unless genuinely shorter than a minute. ### Structure of a block Declarations first, then actions, in this order: ```ckl servings 4 # exactly one, first ingredient "bread" 300g # every ingredient, with an amount ingredient "olive oil" 40ml pan "grill pan" 28cm # every piece of equipment knife "chef's knife" cut "bread" style slice size 15mm # then the actions, in cooking order toast "bread" in pan at 220C for 4min ``` Nothing may be referenced before it is declared. ### Declarations ```ckl servings 4 ingredient "chicken breast" 600g ingredient "olive oil" 30ml pan "cast iron skillet" 28cm pot "stock pot" 8l oven "standard oven" bowl "mixing bowl" 3l knife "chef's knife" sheet "baking sheet" 46cm refrigerator "refrigerator" ``` - `ingredient "" ` — an amount is mandatory. There is no unit for "one of something", so count items become mass. - An equipment declaration is always **a keyword, then a quoted name**. There are exactly seven keywords and **you cannot invent one**: `pan`, `pot`, `oven`, `bowl`, `knife`, `sheet`, `refrigerator`. The size is optional. The keyword is the *kind of vessel*; the quoted name is the *specific item*. A cooling rack is not its own keyword — it is declared `oven "wire cooling rack"`, because that is the keyword its database entry allows. Writing `wire_cooling_rack "wire cooling rack"` fails with E001, because the parser reaches a word that is not a keyword and has nothing to do with it. **Copy the whole line from the list below.** Do not assemble one yourself from a name and a keyword you think fits. - A `sheet` is a baking sheet or tray — a surface you arrange things on. It is not an `oven`. - Declare a `refrigerator` whenever you use `chill` — that is a hard error otherwise (E402). - Declare a `knife` whenever you use `cut` — that is a hard error otherwise (E401). - An unknown quoted name is a hard error (E104). - You get **one of each equipment type** per recipe. Two pans means using `stage` (see below). #### Every equipment declaration there is Copy one of these lines verbatim. Any name or alias on a line is accepted, so `pan "skillet"` and `pan "cast iron skillet"` are the same declaration. **`pan`** - `pan "baking dish"` — also: casserole dish, gratin dish, square dish, oven dish - `pan "cast iron skillet"` — also: cast iron pan, skillet, frying pan, large skillet, wide skillet - `pan "grill pan"` — also: griddle pan, indoor grill, flat griddle - `pan "non-stick pan"` — also: teflon pan, coated pan - `pan "stainless steel pan"` — also: stainless pan, sauté pan - `pan "wok"` — also: stir-fry pan **`pot`** - `pot "dutch oven"` — also: braiser, cocotte, casserole pot - `pot "saucepan"` — also: small pot, sauce pot, wide saucepan - `pot "stock pot"` — also: large pot, pasta pot, soup pot, deep pot **`oven`** - `oven "oven"` — also: main oven, standard oven, conventional oven, home oven - `oven "roasting pan"` — also: roaster - `oven "wire cooling rack"` — also: cooling rack, oven rack, wire rack **`bowl`** - `bowl "mixing bowls"` — also: prep bowls, bowls, mixing bowl **`knife`** - `knife "chef's knife"` — also: chef knife, cook's knife, gyuto **`sheet`** - `sheet "baking sheet"` — also: sheet pan, cookie sheet, half sheet pan **`refrigerator`** - `refrigerator "refrigerator"` — also: fridge, chiller **Not declarable.** These are in the equipment database but have no CKL keyword, so they cannot appear in the block at all. If one matters, say so in the notes instead: `colander` · `cutting board` · `fine-mesh strainer` · `immersion blender` · `instant-read thermometer` · `kitchen scale` · `kitchen tongs` · `pepper mill` · `spatula (silicone)` · `whisk` · `wooden spoon` ### Technique statements — prefer these This is the modern, preferred form. Every technique takes the same optional clauses, in any order: ``` "target"... [in ] [with "medium"...] [on "surface"] [at ] [for