recipe

plural recipes

1. archaicmedicineA formula for preparing or using a medicine; a prescription; also, a medicine prepared from such instructions.First known use 16th c.

   1 more example

   As the world's drug habit shows, governments are failing in their quest to monitor every London window-box and Andean hillside for banned plants. But even that Sisyphean task looks easy next to the fight against synthetic drugs. No sooner has a drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one.

   2013 August 10, “A new prescription”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848

2. Any set of instructions for preparing a mixture of ingredients.First known use 17th c.

   [Isaac Newton] was obsessed with alchemy. He spent hours copying alchemical recipes and trying to replicate them in his laboratory. He believed that the Bible contained numerological codes. The truth is that Newton was very much a product of his time.

   2014 June 21, “Magician’s brain”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8892

3. broadlyA plan or procedure to obtain a given end result; a prescription.First known use 17th c.

   His new approach is definitely a recipe for success.

4. Now especially, a set of instructions for making or preparing food dishes.First known use 18th c.
5. A set of conditions and parameters of an industrial process to obtain a given result.

   Stepper recipes.