The story goes that Mrs. Lindsey, Paige’s grandmother, who was an inimitable biscuit-maker—-used no recipe. She poured flour into her bowl, dashed in some of this and a pinch of that and a chunk of the other; all the while whirling it all into a lump of dough. From that she pinched clumps of dough onto a tray, and popped it into the wood-fired oven. Magically, golden brown, fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth biscuits delightfully tickled the taste buds of all.
Mrs. Lindsey’s grandchildren rebuff the notion that she used no recipe. Yes. There was no written-down prescription. Yes. She did not use any metered utensils to measure ingredients. And yes; she did not set or check the temperature of the oven (well, it was a wood-fired one!). And yet. And yet, we all know her procedure had been refined several times a day for decades. So her recipe was precision by feel, or by heart. And it was perfect.
The first recorded use of receipt is a reference to a medicinal preparation in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (c. 1386). Recipe didn’t arrive until the 1500s, and it was also first used to describe medicine. Both words began to be applied to cooking only in the 18th century; (note)
Cooks/chefs have followed something of a pattern in preparing their cooking ingredients and procedures for aeons; their practices were more or less haphazard until the end of the 19th century. Fanny Farmer, a Boston Cooking School principal, introduced the use of standardized measuring spoons and cups, as well as level measurement in recipes for cooking. She became author of many cookbooks. However, Little-Brown, her first publisher, did not believe cookbooks would sell. Fanny Farmer had to finance personally the publication of her first cookbook,The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book.
There are “How-to…” books available today on just about anything that is made. Some are better than others. The better ones are like Mrs. Lindsey’s method; Tried (over and over) and true (without compromise.) Some instructions require significant, precise, labor, as was required for the lampstands in the Holy of Holies. The first indication of something of a recipe in the Bible is God’s instruction to Noah for building the Ark.
More important than building things is building up the interior framework of the heart. The Apostle Paul counselled filling one’s self with the fruit of the Spirit (which is) love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against things like this. He had found the church in Galatia in trouble—they were not following God’s recipe, in a manner of speaking. This was Paul’s offer of help.
Even in the event that things go wrong, redemption is possible. I have a friend who is wizard at cake decorating. On the way to deliver a carefully crafted wedding cake, traffic interceded. Her husband stomped the brakes and stopped the car, avoiding a traffic accident. It crumpled the cake. Most folks would have tossed the remains. Not my friend. She and her husband turned aside and set to work redesigning the cake in a marvelous way. My take on this is that from the beginning, she had meticulously followed the recipe and redemption was possible.
Psalm 139 describes the recipe God used for creating you and me. More than that, it describes God’s compassion, companionship, and constant love for you and me.