Recipe Structure

Ponzu looks for specific sections in your recipe files in order to display them intelligently while you cook.

How sections are identified

The parser looks for two specific level-2 headers in the markdown body (everything after the YAML frontmatter):

## Ingredients
## Instructions

Both headers must be present and ## Ingredients must appear before ## Instructions. If either header is missing or they appear in the wrong order, the entire recipe is treated as a single block.

Tip

A recipe without ## Ingredients or ## Instructions is totally valid! Sometimes it’s useful to write a recipe without this distinction. Ponzu will display it just as you wrote it, in a single panel.

More detail

When both headers are found in order, the recipe is split into three regions:

1. Preamble — any content that appears before ## Ingredients. This might be a short description, a note about the dish, etc. It’s optional.
2. Ingredients — content between ## Ingredients and ## Instructions, excluding both headers.
3. Instructions — all content after ## Instructions to the end of the file.

Preamble

## Ingredients

...ingredients content

## Instructions

...instructions content (everything after this header to end of file)