h-recipe

Tantek Çelik (Editor)

---

h-recipe is a simple, open format for publishing recipes on the web. h-recipe is one of several open microformat draft standards suitable for embedding data in HTML.

h-recipe is the microformats2 update to hRecipe.

Per CC0, to the extent possible under law, the editors have waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work. In addition, as of 2024-11-21, the editors have made this specification available under the Open Web Foundation Agreement Version 1.0.

Example

Here is a simple minimal recipe example:

<article class="h-recipe">
  <h1 class="p-name">Bagels</h1>
  
  <ul>
    <li class="p-ingredient">Flour</li>
    <li class="p-ingredient">Sugar</li>
    <li class="p-ingredient">Yeast</li>
  </ul>
 
  <p>Takes <time class="dt-duration" datetime="1H">1 hour</time>,
     serves <data class="p-yield" value="4">four people</data>.</p>
  
  <div class="e-instructions">
    <ol>
      <li>Start by mixing all the ingredients together.</li>
    </ol>
  </div>
</article>

Parsed JSON:

{
  "items": [
    {
      "type": [
        "h-recipe"
      ],
      "properties": {
        "name": [
          "Bagels"
        ],
        "ingredient": [
          "Flour",
          "Sugar",
          "Yeast"
        ],
        "yield": [
          "4"
        ],
        "instructions": [
          {
            "value": "Start by mixing all the ingredients together.",
            "html": "<ol>       <li>Start by mixing all the ingredients together.</li>     </ol>"
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  ]
}

Get started

The class h-recipe is a root class name that indicates the presence of an h-recipe.

p-name, e-instructions, p-ingredient and the other property classnames listed below define elements as properties of the h-recipe.

See microformats-2-parsing to learn more about property classnames.

Properties

Core Properties

The following core h-entry properties have broad consensus and are broadly interoperably published and consumed:

h-recipe properties, inside an element with class h-recipe:

• p-name - the name of the recipe
• p-ingredient - describes one or more ingredients used in the recipe.
• p-yield - Specifies the quantity produced by the recipe, like how many persons it satisfyies
• e-instructions - the method of the recipe.
• dt-duration - the time it takes to prepare the meal described by the recipe.
• u-photo - an accompanying image

Experimental properties with wide adoption

• p-summary - provides a short summary or introduction
• p-author - person who wrote the recipe, optionally embedded with h-card
  Main article: h-card
• dt-published - the date the recipe was published
• p-nutrition - nutritional information like calories, fat, dietary fiber etc.
• p-category - recipe categories/tags
• ...

Proposed properties

The following properties are proposed additions based on various use-cases but are awaiting citations of use across multiple sites in the wild, and at least one reader / real world consuming code example:

• u-remix-of - the URL which the h-entry is considered a “remix” of. Optionally an embedded h-cite. The purpose of this in an h-recipe is to identify that this recipe is a remix, or based on another recipe, and giving appropriate citation to that individual. In theory, if this was an exact copy, the u-repost-of used in h-entry would apply.

Status

h-recipe is a microformats.org draft specification. Public discussion on h-recipe takes place on h-recipe-feedback and the #microformats irc channel on irc.freenode.net.

h-recipe is ready to use and implemented in the wild, but for backwards compatibility you should also mark h-recipes up with classic hRecipe classnames.

Property Details

(stub, add any property explanations here)

dt-duration should be marked up using the duration microsyntax defined in HTML5. TODO: add more examples

hRecipe has a number of experimental properties which have real world adoption due to Google recipe search support of hRecipe. These are: summary, author, published and nutrition.

Examples in the Wild

• Eli Duke has posted some h-recipes on his site:
  • http://www.eliduke.com/recipes/kale-salad
  • http://www.eliduke.com/recipes/hummus
  • http://www.eliduke.com/recipes/wacky-cake
  • http://www.eliduke.com/recipes/vegan-mac-and-cheese

• Jonathan LaCour has created several h-recipes using his Known plugin on his site:
  • https://cleverdevil.io/2015/kentucky-maid-cocktail

• Perfect Company marks up their recipes with h-recipe:
  • https://makeitperfectly.com/drink/recipes/1a1913f6-6ba2-11e5-a3ed-f372faffcfa4
  • https://makeitperfectly.com/bake/recipes/194a6cea-6ba2-11e5-a3ed-8367b69ac326

• Aaron Parecki has several recipes on his website
  • https://aaronparecki.com/2020/06/01/19/banana-bread
  • https://aaronparecki.com/2018/12/25/8/habanero-sauce

Validating

Main article: validators

Test and validate microformats2 markup in general with:

• https://pin13.net/mf2/ - enter your markup directly
• https://pin13.net/ - enter a URL to a page to test where it says "Microformats Parser"

Implementations

This section is informative.

Tools for generating and consuming h-recipe. When it gets too big we can move it to a separate page like h-recipe-implementations.

Consuming h-recipe (sites and tools that consume and do something with h-recipe)

• Pinterest supports h-recipe to create "rich pins"
• ... (stub)

Generating h-recipe (sites and tools that help produce and publish h-recipe)

• Recipe post generator for Known CMS by Jonathan LaCour.

Advocacy - open source and other implementations which would benefit from h-recipe support or some degree of support has been requested - feel free to help implement these.

• OpenRecipes issue 198 feature request: update spider to parse for the original hRecipe microformat, and the new h-recipe microformats2 update

Backward Compatibility

Publisher Compatibility

(stub)

Parser Compatibility

Microformats parsers SHOULD detect classic properties only if a classic root class name is found and parse them as microformats2 properties.

If an "h-recipe" is found, don't look for an "hrecipe" on the same element.

compat root class name: hrecipe
properties: (parsed as p- plain text unless otherwise specified)

• fn - parse as p-name
• ingredient
• yield
• instructions - parse as e-
• duration - parse as dt-
• photo - parse as u-
• summary
• author - including compat root vcard in the absence of h-card
• nutrition
• category
• rel=tag - parse as p-category. While not a class name nor typical microformats property, rel=tag was the typical way to tag an hrecipe. Thus parsers should look for rel=tag hyperlinks inside an hrecipe, and take the last path segment of their "href" value as a value for a p-category property.

Background

h-recipe is based on the existing hRecipe specification.

See Also

• h-recipe-feedback
• microformats-2
• h-card can be embedded in h-recipe
• hRecipe is the classic microformat replaced by h-recipe