this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2026
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Yeah, from a computer science perspective, cooking recipes are just algorithms. And I'm pretty sure, they need to be "turing-complete" in that, i.e. you can't really put a general boundary on their complexity.
A particular case that you can't portray with this scheme, is loops. It doesn't happen a lot, but
You could obviously work around it to some degree by writing e.g "Prepare 10 dumplings" and maybe list the steps for that separately below.
But yeah, there's going to be other complexities like conditions, e.g. "if you're doing the vegan version, mix in the agave syrup now".
...But I guess, there's also no law that forces you to use that scheme for all recipes. You can totally write it out in prose when the boxes start getting hacky.
A workaround for loops is to simply label every box A1, A2, B1, etc. and have it say "repeat steps A1-5" or whatever. You can also just edit the framework of the box entirely or use separate tables for totally independent parts. Anyway, I just dig the visual stacking lol.