A Muse for Cooks Offers Ideas for Cooks

Posted on August 9, 2002

A Muse for Cooks is a new recipe website for cooks who don't use recipes. The site is designed for cooks who use cookbooks and other recipe sources for inspiration rather than detailed lists of ingredients and step-by-step instructions.

"There are millions of cooks who cook by instinct," says Jack Turner, an experienced amateur cook and creator of the website. "They improvise, just the way jazz musicians do. Recipes are nothing but a concept for them, like a melody line or string of chords . . . something to be built upon, embellished."

For these improvisers, recipes are a waste of time, Turner says. "You have to wade through a list of ingredients measured to the milligram and then read self-evident instructions such as "in a small bowl. . ." When you're all done reading you find that you're making scrambled eggs with a little cumin added to make it exotic. Why not just say "add cumin seed to scrambled eggs." Other things you won't find on Cooksmuse.com (because they are self-evident according to Turner) are: "Remove from oven . . ."; "In a microwave safe dish . . ." and "Use a pot holder when . .. "

The website has more than 1500 quick recipe sketches organized by finished product, such as pasta sauces, appetizers, casseroles etc. and also organized by primary ingredients. Turner is the retired founding publisher of Soundings, a boating newspaper that is based in Essex, Connecticut.