One of the NewAnalogiesForSoftware.

Apart from the tech-mainstream uses of "recipe" and "cookbook" as technical terms, there's also:
* Taste EarlyAndOften (if producing a product with many components, such as a French apricot tart, engage in UnitTasting)
* ThreeStarRestaurants has the same connotations to me, negative as well as positive, as ThreeStarProgrammer''''''s
**''Yeah, but what about 4 or 5 star restaurants?'' 
** CapabilityMaturityModel
* ElizabethDavid's FrenchProvincialCooking could be glossed as CookTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork (and a reaction to BigCuisineUpFront)
* If it smells bad, TossIt
-- PeterHartley

''bon appetit!''

Cooking also displays the ultimate in PlanToThrowOneAway and EvolutionaryDelivery, but to a large degree deprecates reuse.
-- FrankCarver

Depends where you draw the analogy. A recipe is reusable - indeed, recipes evolve and fork like software projects, and exhibit their own PatternLanguage. And if you refactor your fridge mercilessly (on the principle of YouArentGonnaEatIt) you can end up with a collection of, uh, stock components which can be used both to solve new instances of familiar problems, and as usefully high-level abstractions for the experimentation process that leads to solving new problems.

Many people of my generation learned to program by typing in listings from magazines - not unlike how many people learn to cook. Today magazines have the programs on CD-ROM. Make one person follow a recipe; take another to a restaurant. Both subsist; only one learns how to cook. -- PeterHartley

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A friend in the catering industry told me that really is a people business, because almost ''anyone'' in the supply chain can mess up your product, so you have to make everyone understand what's important. -- SteveFreeman

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It's not often I've wanted to copy verbatim from RecentChanges but this page first appeared as:

AnalogiesFromCookery . . . . . . cinnamon.ant.co.uk

Superb! How did you do that? 
-- RichardDrake

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So who's the DeliaSmith of software then? ''I'd nominate EdYourdon as the MrsBeeton''

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See also, ''On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen'', ISBN: 0684843285.
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One can take this too literally and program in ChefLanguage.
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What cooking and XP have in common, Bakeoff, relationships, receipes and code, etc:
* http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_09_05_a_bakeoff.html