Eating is unequivocally the best. It keeps us strong, healthy, and alive so we can experience life. But of course, there’s no eating without cooking first. Even if you enjoy cooking, it can sometimes be time-consuming. Timing is just one of the reasons why cooking can be really challenging for us, and we end up calling the pizza place… Until the weight scale finally makes understand how cooking is a pivotal aspect of our daily routines. Even when cooking can be challenging, its beauty also resides in its replicability. This Recipe Book template allows you to gather, organize, and store your favorite recipes all in the same place. Create, copy, edit, and add your own personal touch to each recipe, and you’ll be spicing up your life in no time. Here are a few template features and highlights, by table:

Dishes

Cooking is both an art and science. Blend these two together, and a delicious dish can be repeated when following a method. This table the base of every single recipe book. While some dishes use the same ingredients, it’s about how they’re used. The table features quantities, timing instructions, processes, notes, and more. Expand on this Dishes table to keep track of calories or any other metric related to dishes.

Fields

• Name. The name of the dish. Keep it short and sweet, as you might see it on a restaurant menu.
• Category. Choose from a selection of meats, soups, desserts, pasta, salads, sauces, and more. Recategorize and add your own!
• Picture. An image of the dish.
• Difficulty. How challenging the dish is to prepare, generally speaking. The default difficulties are easy, medium, and difficult.
• Ingredients. This is a linked field to the Ingredients table. It denotes the ingredients necessary to cook the dish.
• Ingredients: optional. This field is also linked to the Ingredients table. These are ingredients that are not integral to the main dish, but can help enhance or garnish your dishes.
• Ingredients: quantity. Make sure you are using your ingredients wisely and in the right quantity to repeat the flavor you are looking for in every dish!
• Materials needed. This is a linked field to the Materials table, which displays all of the materials necessary to cook the dish accurately.
• Prep time (minutes). The estimated time it takes to prepare the dish before actually cooking it in minutes.
• Cook time (minutes). This is the estimated amount of time spent cooking the meal in minutes.
• Total time (hours). This is the total amount of time it would take to prep and cook the meal in hours.
• Servings. The number of servings the dish yields.
• Cost (all ingredients). This is a formula field that calculates the total cost of the meal per serving including all of the optional ingredients.
• Cost (necessities). This formula field looks to the Ingredients table to identify the cost of each ingredient used in the recipe, displaying the total cost of the recipe per serving without any of the optional ingredients.
• Instructions. Instructions are an important step to repeat the magic of a delicious, well-prepared dish. This field allows you to add as many steps, tricks to recreate all those particular conditions you need to remember to prepare your dishes carefully.
• Suggestions. Add those elements to complement the dish, for example, a good glass of wine, some ideas to garnish, etc.
• Link. This is a space to add a links if you prefer to add it.
• Notes. Use this final space to add comments, advice and all those items you need to add to your recipe book, but you’re not totally sure where they should be placed.

Views

• All dishes. Displays all dishes, sorted alphabetically by dish name.
• Difficulty: easy. Displays dishes that are considered easy to make.
• Difficulty: medium. Displays dishes that are considered mid-tier in terms of difficulty.
• Difficulty: hard. Displays dishes that are considered more difficult or complicated to make.
• Category: desserts. Displays all dishes that are categorized as desserts, sorted by cook time in ascending order.
• Category: read meats. Displays all dishes that are categorized as red meats, sorted by cook time in ascending order.
• Category: pasta. Displays all dishes that are categorized as pasta, sorted by cook time in ascending order.
• Category: poultry. Displays all dishes that are categorized as poultry, sorted by cook time in ascending order.
• Category: salads. Displays all dishes that are categorized as salads, sorted by cook time in ascending order.
• Category: sauces. Displays all dishes that are categorized as sauces, sorted by cook time in ascending order.
• Category: seafood. Displays all dishes that are categorized as seafood, sorted by cook time in ascending order.
• Category: soups and broths. Displays all dishes that are categorized as soups and broths, sorted by cook time in ascending order.
• Quick dishes. Displays all dishes that take one hour or less to complete sorted by total time in ascending order.
• Budget friendly. Displays all dishes that cost less than 6 of any currency per serving of that dish sorted in ascending order by cost to make.
• Dishes. Displays all recipes in a cooking recipe card format, just like you would see in a little book, sorted in alphabetical order.
• By difficulty. Displays recipes grouped together by difficulty level in the form of a kanban view.

Ingredients

The same way that dishes are the heart of this Recipe Book template, ingredients are the heart of dishes. Choose from almost 100 ingredients, and add your own! Don’t be afraid of expanding your list to hundreds or even thousands of rows—you’re always able to search for specific ingredients so that you never skip a beat (or meal, rather).

Fields

• Name. The ingredient’s name.
• Dishes. This is a linked field to the Dishes table with all of the dishes that the ingredient is present in. This is a really helpful field in that it helps you create connections between the ingredients and dishes, which could spark ideas for new dishes.
• Dishes: optional ingredients. This is also a linked field to the Dishes table.
• Cost per serving. This field indicates the price of one serving of the ingredient in any currency.

Views

• All ingredients. Displays all ingredients, sorted in alphabetical order.
• Budget friendly. Displays all ingredients that cost less than .50 per serving.
• Luxury cuisine. Displays all ingredients that are on the more expensive end of the spectrum and cost more than 1 per serving sorted in alphabetical order.

Materials

Beside ingredients and a good stove, some meals need particular tools and equipment in order to be properly cooked. Specific knives, wooden pallets, a blenders, frying pans, and so on are just a few examples of what some dishes may require. Similar to the Ingredients table, this template comes preloaded with 25 popular kitchen supplies that you’re free to add, delete, or modify at any time.

Fields

• Name. The name of the equipment at hand.
• Used with. This is a linked field to the Dishes table, which shows all of the dishes that each particular material is used with/for.
• Notes. A general catch-all field to add specific notes about any particular piece of equipment necessary.

Views

• All materials. Displays all materials, sorted alphabetically.