An open standard · v0.2
A recipe is not a list. It is a river.
Write the recipe as text and Cooking Chart draws it for you: how long each step takes, what happens at the same time, when each ingredient goes in and how long your hands are busy.
See the text that draws it
recipe "Lasagna bolognese" cooks 1 ingredients beef 500 g tomato 800 g milk 500 ml flour 50 g butter 50 g sheets 250 g bolognese = simmer(beef, tomato) 45min roux = cook(butter, flour) 5min bechamel = cook(roux, milk) 10min keeps 30min lasagna = assemble(bolognese, bechamel, sheets) 15min baked = bake(lasagna) @180ºC 40min serve baked
Good cooks don't read recipes top to bottom.
Recipes are written as a sequence of steps, but cooking doesn't work that way. While something boils you chop something else; a sauce has to be ready right when you need it; the oven goes on ahead of time. What a good cook keeps in their head, a list doesn't show.
Time
How long each step and the whole recipe take, drawn to scale: a 45-minute step is nine times longer than a 5-minute one.
Parallelism
What you can do at the same time, what depends on what, and what sets the pace. The critical path shows up on its own.
Your hands
Which steps keep you busy and which run on their own: the oven, a stew, a rest. And how much free time the recipe leaves you.
A visual grammar, always the same.
Time flows from left to right. Each preparation runs in its own lane and everything flows into the dish, like a river.
- ProcessOne bar per step, from the minute it starts to the minute it ends. The color is the kind: prep, stovetop, oven, rest or assembly.
- UnattendedHatched: the step runs on its own and you can do something else.
- IngredientDrops onto the step that uses it, at the exact minute it goes in.
- What you have so farThe band leaving each step. It grows thicker as it gathers ingredients.
- TributaryA parallel preparation flowing into another one: the béchamel into the assembly.
- WaitingDashed: something ready, waiting for its turn. Red if it waits longer than it keeps.
- Critical pathThe white line under the steps that set the total time. If they slip, the dish slips.
- HandsBelow the chart, when you are busy. Red if it would take more hands than you have.
- DishWhere everything ends, with the total time.
If you write recipes, this is for you.
On a blog, on your website or in your own notebook: Cooking Chart turns your recipes into something you understand at a glance, without changing the way you work.
On your blog or website
One line of code and the recipe appears drawn, with the method and the work plan if you want them. Search engines get it in the format they understand. Works on WordPress, Hugo, Astro or any page that takes HTML or Markdown.
How to embed it →For your own recipe book
Your recipes as plain text, yours forever. Open them in the editor, see when to start each thing and share them with a link.
Open the editor →Without learning the language
Paste your recipe into the editor, copy the instructions for your AI (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude…) and come back with the recipe already written in CCL, ready to be drawn.
Convert with your AI →Three pieces, one standard.
A language: CCL
Each step is one line: result = verb(ingredients) duration. Dependencies, parallelism and timing are worked out for you. In English and Spanish.
Specification →A chart and two texts
The same text gives the chart, with no crossing lines, the work plan with its minutes and the method, in linked sentences. Nobody writes or places anything by hand.
Gallery →Embeddable
One line of code and your recipe appears drawn on your blog, your website or a Markdown document.
How to embed it →Every recipe has a signature.
The same chart, without text and at the same scale. An omelette is a short stroke; a loaf of bread is a long line, almost all hatched: lots of time, little work.
Truly open.
Cooking Chart is a standard, not a product. Anyone can write recipes, build tools or extend the vocabulary.