I think fundamentally we're not looking at cookbooks the same, and I'd say most cooks have a different visions as yours as well. The main divergence would be t

I think fundamentally we're not looking at cookbooks the same, and I'd say most cooks have a different visions as yours as well. The main divergence would be that a cookbook is usually targeted at someone relatively skilled at cooking, well versed in the basic operations, and able to predict how much of each ingredients they'll actually need in it. The consequence is it acts more like guidelines than exact instructions to reproduce a given result. In programming parlance, it's pseudo code or an algorithm, and not compilable source code. So how should it work for occasional and new cooks ? The answer will traditionally be to learn first from someone else, or go through trial and error and learn by themselves. That's where to me ingredients specified with precision make no sense, because you'll actually want to adjust depending on what you have at hand, what state it is, and how much you actually want of it. Typically, you'll be doing a recipe twice or three times before really get a hand of it. Same for oven temperatures and cooking time, you'll probably have to adjust for your actual kitchen and your actual ingredients, etc.