Peter Jaros wrote:
On Feb 24, 2004, at 10:31 AM, Dan Miller wrote:
I'd have fewer problems if they were accompanied by an article on the food item in question. A recipe, on its own, doesn't belong in an encyclopedia.
Again, however, as someone said earlier, an encyclopedia ought to be *de*criptive, not *pro*scriptive.
The only ones that are proscribing the work of others are those wanting to delete these recipes.
Thus, cocktail recipes might be more appropriate than, say, cake recipes (in their respective articles). A Cosmopolitan, for instance, is made according to more or less one recipe, whereas there are myriad recipes for, for example, chocolate cake which are more than slight variations of one another.
If there is more than one recipe, than why not just show how they vary?
Giving a recipe for a particular chocolate cake would not serve to describe chocolate cake. If one recipe was particularly famous, however, it might merit its own section (or possibly article; I'd like to try *that* cake) where the recipe *would* be descriptive. It's a subtle distinction, but an important one. It comes through to readers, if only in terms of a sense of the style.
That's very patronizing of you.
Ec