Recipes: Creating an Index

If you’ve got a few cookbooks, some old magazines or calendars with favourite recipes, and several online sources that you like to use for recipes, it’s easy to lose track of where that one that you’re looking for (whether a particularly successful experiment or one on your list to try later) happens to be stored.

The old “Index card” system of storing recipes had some advantages, and you can make use of them without having to take the time to copy out every recipe you like onto a card (virtual or actual). Instead, just keep a card noting the name of the recipe and the source (book or magazine name, including the date, and page number, or the URL and exact recipe name for easy online searching), and keep that card in your indexing system. If you’ve still got paper “recipe cards”, file the reference card in the same location that you would if the complete recipe were in there. If you function mainly electronically, create a spreadsheet or table for tracking the same information. The electronic method has the advantage of letting you sort or search by different methods (for example, if you can’t remember the exact title of the recipe, or if you include a column with notes like ‘pot luck’, ‘dessert’ or ‘to try’).

It’s a little bit of work to get started, but as someone who tends to gather ideas and information from lots of different sources, I find it really helpful to have just one well-organized reference place. It also helps when I feel like my flow of creative meal ideas has completely dried up and I can look through it for ideas of what I’ve liked but that have slipped my mind in more recent days.

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