Recipe

How to spell recipe

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce recipe

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does recipe mean?

1. nounA set of instructions listing the ingredients and steps for preparing a particular dish.
2. nounA method or set of conditions likely to lead to a particular result.

Recipe in a sentence

• She copied her grandmother's recipe for shortbread onto a card.

• Skipping the safety checks is a recipe for disaster.

• The recipe calls for two eggs and a cup of flour.

• Their mix of talent and hard work proved a recipe for success.

Where does recipe come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes straight from Latin, where recipe is the imperative form of the verb recipere, meaning 'to take' or 'to receive'. That verb was built from the prefix re-, here adding a sense of 'back' or 'in return', and capere, meaning 'to take', the same root that gives us 'capture' and 'capable'. In medieval and early modern medicine, a doctor's written instruction to a pharmacist began with the command 'Recipe', literally 'Take the following', listing the ingredients to be combined, and this is the origin of the 'Rx' symbol still seen on prescriptions today. English adopted the word in the 1500s in this medical sense, and only later, by the eighteenth century, did it settle into its familiar kitchen meaning of a set of cooking instructions. The spelling trap lies in that final 'e' being sounded as 'ee' and the unstressed middle vowel that sounds like a soft 'uh', tempting writers toward 'recipie' or 'recepie'.

How the word is built

• re- (back, again)
• cip (from capere: to take)
• -e (Latin imperative ending)