The written library
Everything somebody actually wrote down.
Every one of the 1,261 dishes and drinks here carries a method somebody wrote out — the technique, the ratio, and the one thing that usually goes wrong. Not a generated paragraph, not a family rule standing in for a recipe. 1261 written, 1,261 in the library, and the two numbers are the same on purpose.
Prepared ingredients in small bowls before cooking begins
1261 with a written method.
Dinner · 28
25 min · medium
Æbleskiver
Danish pancake balls without the pan: small batter cakes, berries in the middle, sugar. They should be custardy inside. Don't make muffins.
18 min · easy
Aglio e olio
Pantry-true. Slice garlic, gold not brown, chili if you want heat. Pasta water makes it a sauce instead of oily noodles.
35 min · easy
Ají de gallina
Peruvian shredded chicken in a bread-nut-chili sauce. Yellow chili would be right; chili flakes and a little cheese get you there. It should coat, not soup.
40 min · easy
Ajiaco
Bogotá chicken and potato pot. Corn stays on the cob if you have it. Cream off the heat, avocado at the table.
40 min · easy
Albóndigas soup
Meatballs in a tomato-cumin broth, rice in the balls or the pot. Mint if you have it. Mexican and Spanish both claim a version. Don't make Italian wedding soup.
35 min · easy
Aloo gobi
Dry-ish skillet. Don't add water until the vegetables have color.
25 min · easy
Amatriciana
Guanciale is traditional; bacon is honest. Chili and tomato, pecorino if you have it.
20 min · easy
Anchovy broccoli pasta
The weeknight that converts anchovy skeptics.
8 min · easy
Anchovy butter toast
Anchovy mashed into soft butter an hour ahead if you can. Nobody will name it, everybody will finish it, and it costs about a pound.
12 min · easy
Anchovy egg toast
Hot toast, a melted anchovy, a jammy egg, lemon. Breakfast that tastes like a bar in Rome. Don't make it a Caesar on bread.
18 min · easy
Anchovy garlic pasta
The tin does the salt work. Melt the fillets into the oil until they disappear and nobody will identify them, but everybody notices.
8 min · easy
Anchovy tomato toast
Anchovy melts if the toast is hot.
5 min · easy
Apple yogurt
Sliced apple, yogurt, a thread of honey. Cinnamon if you want pie. It is breakfast, not a parfait project.
8 min · easy
Apple yogurt crunch
Toast the oats and nuts in a dry pan with honey, then let them cool completely before they touch the yogurt or they go soft on contact.
20 min · easy
Arepa skillet
Cornmeal cakes, cheese in the middle. Eggs on top. Not a pancake, not a tortilla.
20 min · easy
Arrabbiata
Angry tomato. Chili and garlic in oil, tomato, pasta water. Parsley. It should hurt a little. Don't make marinara and add a pinch of flakes at the end.
40 min · easy
Arroz con pollo
Chicken and rice in one pot. Sofrito first, rice in the same fat. Peas at the end. It should be a yellow-orange pot, not fried rice.
8 min · easy
Arugula apple salad
Peppery leaves against crisp fruit, dressed at the last second. Arugula collapses faster than any other salad green.
10 min · easy
Arugula eggs on toast
Dress the leaves in a bowl before they go on. Undressed leaves on toast are decoration; dressed ones are the reason the plate works.
8 min · easy
Arugula ham salad
Salty ham, sharp cheese, bitter leaf.
12 min · easy
Asparagus lemon salad
Thin stems raw; thick stems blanched.
20 min · easy
Asparagus parmesan pasta
Asparagus in at the end so it stays green.
15 min · easy
Asparagus skillet eggs
Snap the woody ends. Eggs last.
25 min · easy
Asparagus soup
Tips aside for garnish. Blend the rest.
30 min · medium
Avgolemono soup
Temper the eggs with hot stock so you get silk, not scramble. Lemon last.
15 min · easy
Avocado chicken bowl
Leftover chicken and an avocado on its last day. Season the rice while it is warm, or the bottom of the bowl tastes of nothing.
10 min · easy
Avocado eggs
Toast hard, because everything going on top of it is soft. A fried egg with crisp white edges turns it from a snack into a breakfast.
8 min · easy
Avocado feta toast
Uses the avocado that is already soft.
Drinks · 20
6 min · easy
Airmail
Daiquiri bones lengthened with sparkle. Honey has to dissolve first.
5 min · medium
Alaska
Gin and yellow or green Chartreuse, stirred. Herbal, not a sour.
4 min · easy
Amaretto sour
Amaretto, lemon and egg white. Amaretto is very sweet on its own, so this needs more lemon than a standard sour.
3 min · easy
Amaro and cola
Fernet-and-cola logic on the amaro you have. Lime. Ice. Don't stir the life out of it.
2 min · easy
Amaro coffee
Amaro and coffee, hot or over ice. The bitterness of both stacks rather than clashing, and it is what to serve instead of dessert.
2 min · easy
Amaro highball
Amaro and soda over ice, which is what Italy drinks after dinner and what most people should drink instead of a third glass of wine.
3 min · easy
Amaro orange highball
Bitter, peel, soda. A digestivo you can drink in the sun. Don't hide it in juice. Ice, amaro, orange, soda last.
2 min · easy
Amaro spritz
Amaro, sparkling wine and soda. Darker and more bitter than an Aperol spritz, and the one to make when the spritz has gone too sweet.
2 min · easy
Amaro tonic
Amaro and tonic over plenty of ice. Two kinds of bitterness that turn out to soften each other.
2 min · easy
Americano
Campari, vermouth and soda over ice — the Negroni before gin was added, and about half the strength.
4 min · easy
Aperol mezcal sour
Aperol's bitterness against smoke, with lemon holding them together. Egg white if you want it soft.
4 min · easy
Aperol sour
Aperol carries its own bitterness, so this needs less sugar than a standard sour. Egg white makes it look like sunset.
2 min · easy
Aperol Spritz
Three parts prosecco, two Aperol, one soda, built over a full glass of ice. Too little ice is why yours goes warm and syrupy.
2 min · easy
Aperol tonic
Lighter than a spritz and less sweet, because tonic brings its own bitterness. A good drink for a long afternoon.
5 min · easy
Apple cider Old Fashioned
A little apple, not a mug of cider. Maple and bitters. It should still taste like whiskey.
6 min · easy
Apple cinnamon cooler
Warm spice, cold glass. Don't make it pie filling.
6 min · easy
Apple ginger sparkling
Thin apple slices in the glass are enough.
4 min · easy
Apple whiskey highball
Bourbon, a splash of apple, soda, a cinnamon stick or a pinch. Lemon so it is not cider. Ice. Don't make a punch.
4 min · easy
Army & Navy
Gin, lemon and orgeat. Three ingredients, and it teaches you what orgeat is actually for.
4 min · medium
Aviation
Gin, maraschino and lemon. A little crème de violette turns it pale blue, which is the version everyone photographs.
The cards above are the first 48 alphabetically, because twelve hundred of anything is a scroll rather than a browse. Search finds all 1261 at once, and the complete lists are one page each — every dish with the same page behind it.
Why the two numbers match
A page is a claim that somebody wrote a recipe. For most of this library’s life that claim was only true a few hundred times, and the rest of the library reached a family rule or a reading of its own row — honest, but not a recipe. Rather than mint a thousand pages off a template, we wrote the thousand methods. It is now a rule the test suite enforces: a dish added without a method gets no page and a red build. If you would rather start from what is on the shelf, the pantry index comes at it from the other end.