Jenn de la Vega recalls an assignment from her seventh-grade teacher, Mr. Hill, that foreshadowed her future as a recipe developer. Mr. Hill told his class to write exact instructions on how to make a sandwich. If he could make the sandwich correctly, he would eat it. If he made it incorrectly, the kids had to eat their own creations.

While most of the class dreamed up combinations like anchovies and peanut butter, de la Vega strived for simplicity and accuracy. “It was a ham and Swiss sandwich with mayo on one side and mustard on the other,” she says. “It helped me understand writing for recipes.”

For every celebrity chef, television personality and cookbook author, there are many more professionals working behind the scenes to develop and perfect recipes. Recipe development involves researching dishes and techniques, shopping for ingredients, testing the dish or drink multiple times, recording every step and writing clear instructions others can easily follow.

If you’re a curious home cook or bartender with an eye for detail, there are lots of opportunities. To help you break into the field, six pros tell us their paths to careers in recipe development.

Jenn de la Vega recalls an assignment from her seventh-grade teacher, Mr. Hill, that foreshadowed her future as a recipe developer. Mr. Hill told his class to write exact instructions on how to make a sandwich. If he could make the sandwich correctly, he would eat it. If he made it incorrectly, the kids had to eat their own creations.

While most of the class dreamed up combinations like anchovies and peanut butter, de la Vega strived for simplicity and accuracy. “It was a ham and Swiss sandwich with mayo on one side and mustard on the other,” she says. “It helped me understand writing for recipes.”

For every celebrity chef, television personality and cookbook author, there are many more professionals working behind the scenes to develop and perfect recipes. Recipe development involves researching dishes and techniques, shopping for ingredients, testing the dish or drink multiple times, recording every step and writing clear instructions others can easily follow.

If you’re a curious home cook or bartender with an eye for detail, there are lots of opportunities. To help you break into the field, six pros tell us their paths to careers in recipe development.

An Event Planner Changes Course

Kara Mickelson was a corporate event planner for Toyota Motor Sales, a job for which she oversaw client trips to five-star resorts in far-flung destinations like Bora Bora. However, in 2007, Mickelson decided to nurture her love of cooking and enrolled in the now-shuttered Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Pasadena, California.

While she originally intended to focus on food styling, her English degree, along with culinary school and the production skills she accumulated as an event planner, nudged Mickelson to recipe development. She began a new career with Southbay magazine and now develops for cookbooks, including the upcoming Friends: The Official Central Perk Cookbook.

 

Source: https://www.winemag.com/