Food Processing

Food Processing

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Food Processing
Food Processing
Watch Your Tone!
Recipe Workshop

Watch Your Tone!

In 3 Easy Steps

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carla lalli music
Mar 21, 2024
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Food Processing
Food Processing
Watch Your Tone!
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Alex Beggs doled out a lot of great advice the other night during our panel, and one of the most exciting things she said had to do with writing recipe headnotes. When working with a cookbook author (including Molly Baz and Andy Baraghani), she would often write three versions of a headnote for one recipe in order to hit the right tone. Few people know this, but at one time I wrote every single recipe headnote in Bon Appétit, which was amazing practice and was also emotionally debilitating. If I was happy with one—or even “satisfied”—I kept right on moving! Rewrites only if forced (and often I was forced). So it came as quite a shock that writers like Alex and the authors she works with would workshop several versions before settling. The discipline!

Line edits on the Greatest Chocolate Chunk Cookie in the World.

I’ve been thinking about this multi-take approach for days now, and about how I wrote headnotes for BA (brand voice) versus how I wrote the headnotes for my books (Carla voice). At BA, our editorial mission was about service. My boss wanted the headnotes to aid and abet the making of the recipes—and I got hammered for missing the mark, believe me.

For example, if a recipe had a long ingredient list, the headnote could focus on why it was worth having, say, three different types of herbs. If a dish called for a piece of equipment folks might not have, information on where to get it and what else you could make with it should be up top. If the recipe had a key moment or a specific step that had a trick to it, that was a great thing to mention. I wrote thousands of headnotes over eight years, and the ability to tease out that useful bit of information became second nature.

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