The Senior Common Room at St Anselm's: IV. The Recipe

The discussion began, unusually, with cake.

Mr Blottisham accepted a generous slice, regarded it with approval, and declared,

"I've always thought recipes were among humanity's happier inventions."

Professor Quillibrace looked up.

"Have you?"

"Oh yes."

"They're much less argumentative than philosophy."

Miss Stray smiled.

"That depends who's cooking."

Blottisham considered this.

"I once knew a gentleman who insisted that raisins constituted a political issue."

"I suspect," said Quillibrace, "that the politics arrived before the raisins."

The Professor reached for the latest essay.

"It proposes that recipes are not primarily instructions."

Blottisham lowered his fork.

"What else could they possibly be?"

"Machines."

Blottisham closed his eyes.

"I had a feeling we might be heading in that direction."

"Not mechanical machines."

"So I've gathered."

"Invisible machines."

"I see."

"No, you don't."

"I rather thought I did."

Quillibrace continued.

"The essay argues that a recipe manufactures possibility."

Blottisham looked at the cake.

"It appears to manufacture sponge."

"Indirectly."

"I should be disappointed if it manufactured anything else."

Miss Stray laughed.

"I think the sponge is the visible result."

"And the invisible result?"

"The future."

Blottisham blinked.

"I'm eating the future?"

"No."

"The recipe allows the future in which there is cake."

"Oh."

He looked relieved.

"That sounds much more digestible."

Quillibrace leaned back.

"Imagine laying flour, butter, eggs and sugar upon the table."

"A promising beginning."

"Is there a cake?"

"Potentially."

"But actually?"

"No."

"Now add a recipe."

Blottisham looked around.

"The ingredients haven't changed."

"Precisely."

"So where has the cake come from?"

Before Blottisham could answer, Miss Stray spoke.

"It has come from the pattern."

Silence settled over the room.

Blottisham frowned thoughtfully.

"So the recipe contributes..."

"...no ingredients."

"...but it contributes organisation."

"Exactly."

He looked at his slice again.

"I've been congratulating the flour when I ought to have been congratulating the sequence."

"Among other things."

Quillibrace nodded approvingly.

"The order matters."

"So does the timing."

"And the temperature."

"And whether one remembers to remove the cake before Christmas."

Miss Stray smiled.

"You've done that?"

"Once."

"What happened?"

"It became educational."

There was a brief pause while everyone contemplated the possibilities.

Quillibrace turned another page.

"The essay also suggests that recipes reveal something important about knowledge."

Blottisham brightened.

"I know several recipes."

"You do?"

"I can produce toast with considerable reliability."

"I meant more generally."

"Oh."

"The interesting thing is that recipes never seem to tell the whole story."

Miss Stray nodded.

"My grandmother's recipes were like that."

"'A little more if necessary.'"

"'Cook until it looks right.'"

"'Enough flour.'"

Blottisham looked puzzled.

"Those are terrible instructions."

"They are."

"So why do they work?"

"Because they assume judgement."

Blottisham thought for a moment.

"So part of the recipe..."

"Yes?"

"...isn't written down."

"No."

"It's carried by the cook."

Miss Stray smiled.

"Exactly."

"The words are only one ingredient."

The Professor looked pleased.

"I rather like that."

"So do I."

Blottisham finished his cake.

"I've suddenly become rather suspicious of instruction manuals."

"In what way?"

"They also leave things out."

"They do."

"I once assembled a bookcase that leaned permanently to the left."

Quillibrace raised an eyebrow.

"The bookcase or the instructions?"

"I'm still uncertain."

Miss Stray looked thoughtfully at the empty plate.

"I wonder whether civilisation is full of recipes."

Quillibrace looked interested.

"Go on."

"We speak of traditions."

"Customs."

"Professional training."

"Scientific methods."

"They all seem to say the same thing."

"And what is that?"

"'If you do these things in roughly this way...'"

"...'certain futures become more likely.'"

The Professor smiled slowly.

"An elegant observation."

Blottisham sat quietly for a while.

Finally he said,

"I've always imagined civilisation was built from buildings."

"No."

"Or laws."

"Not only."

"Or governments."

"They help."

Blottisham looked around the Common Room.

"But perhaps it's also built from people quietly showing other people how to do things."

No one replied immediately.

It was Miss Stray who eventually broke the silence.

"Perhaps that is why teaching matters so much."

Quillibrace nodded.

"A recipe is never merely information."

"No?"

"It is one generation quietly refusing to let another begin from nothing."

The room fell silent again.

Blottisham looked at the last crumbs of cake on his plate.

"I must confess..."

"Yes?"

"I shall never look at sponge quite the same way again."

Quillibrace smiled.

"My dear Blottisham..."

"Yes?"

"The best recipes rarely change only the cake."

"They also change the cook?"

"And occasionally," said Miss Stray, "the civilisation."

Blottisham looked thoughtfully at the recipe card lying beside the teapot.

"I wonder..."

"What is it?"

"...whether every cookbook is secretly a history book."