CookNoBook
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About CookNoBook

Cooking, one calm box at a time.

Ever felt lost during the process of making biryani? Or maybe you forgot to put your tomatoes in the mixer while you were fixated on the frying pan. CookNoBook turns a recipe into a single picture you can take in at a glance. Made for anyone who finds the wall of recipe text harder than the cooking itself: autistic cooks, ADHD brains, dyslexic and dyspraxic folks, and everyone who has lost their place mid-recipe with salt and sugar in different places.

What a recipe grid looks like

A recipe grid for mocha brownies. Nine ingredients are listed down the left, from butter to salt. Two setup steps run across the top: butter and flour the pan, and preheat the oven. To the right, shaded boxes each span the ingredients they use: melt the butter; mix it with sugar, vanilla and espresso; mix in the eggs; fold in the dry ingredients; then bake at 350°F for 30 to 40 minutes.

Why a grid?

Written recipes quietly ask a lot of your brain. The grid takes some of that weight off.

Nothing to remember

A paragraph asks you to remember step three while you're processing step eight. The grid keeps every step in view, so your working memory can take a break.

One thing at a time

Each box is a single action with the exact ingredients it needs. No long sentences to untangle before you can pick up a spoon.

You can always find your place

Everything to the left of a box is done; everything to its right is still to come. You can easily check off the steps you've already covered. Hover any box and the ingredients it uses light up.

Plain, literal words

Steps say what to do and how you'll know it's done: “1 tbsp of salt”, not “swaad anusaar”. No guessing what the author meant. We're all learning after all.

Why CookNoBook?

A few things I did on purpose.

  1. Made with ADHD and neurodivergent brains in mind

    An easy-read font (Atkinson Hyperlegible), text sizes you can change, and a calm, plain, beige background (my graphic design head loves beige). No ads, pop-ups, autoplay videos or life stories before the recipe. Timers are there when you want them, and never when you don't. No pressure.

  2. Just search for what you want

    Type what you're craving and you'll get it, laid out and ready to go. No need to fry your brain across ten tabs hunting for the perfect recipe.

  3. A flow diagram, for line-followers

    Some people like boxes, some like following lines. The Graph view draws your recipe as a little map, with each ingredient flowing into the step that uses it.

  4. Timers and portions built in

    Start a timer straight from any step that has a time, and keep several going at once. Cooking for one or for a crowd? Scale the whole recipe from ½× to 3× with a tap.

Four shapes, one recipe

Different brains like different shapes, so every recipe comes four ways. Switch between them with the tabs above any recipe.

Carbonara pasta as a grid: ingredients down the left, and boxes for boil, render, whisk and toss spanning the ingredients each one uses.

▦ Grid

The whole recipe as one table. Best for seeing everything at once.

  1. Your ingredients are listed down the left.
  2. Start with a highlighted box, and tap it when it's done.
  3. Work to the right. The last box is the finished dish.
Carbonara pasta as a flow diagram: lines run from each ingredient into the step that uses it, and the steps join up at the end.

⟶ Graph

Ingredients flowing into steps, like a little map of the meal.

  1. Follow a line from an ingredient to see where it goes.
  2. Where lines meet, that's a step: do it with everything feeding in.
  3. Keep following until all the lines join at the end.
Carbonara pasta as a numbered list of five steps, each with its ingredients shown as small tags underneath.

1 2 3 Steps

A numbered checklist, for when you just want to be told what's next.

  1. Read the step, and the ingredients shown under it.
  2. "Result of step 2" means use what you made in step 2.
  3. Tap a step to tick it off and move to the next.
Carbonara pasta as a card: the first card says get everything ready and lists the six ingredients, with a Let's cook button.

🃏 Cards

One step at a time, like flashcards, for when everything else feels like too much.

  1. The first card lists everything to get ready.
  2. Do what the card says, then press Done, next.
  3. Swipe or use the arrow keys to peek ahead. Nothing gets ticked off until you say so.
A friend smiling at the camera, holding a plate of noodles in one hand and a fork in the other.

a good friend of mine, enjoying his culinary masterpiece

A small note

There's no right way to be in the kitchen. Some cook from memory, some from videos (I personally use Instagram reels hehe), and some need everything laid out in front of them before they can even start This is for that last clique, and for anyone who has ever felt a bit silly for needing it. Trust me, I have.

You're not silly. You're just organized differently. Now go make something good, and enjoy.

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Have feedback? DM me on @yoihen 💌

The grid idea comes from the recipe tables popularized by Cooking for Engineers.