fancy-cookbook – Typst Universe

Inspired by the excellent chef-cookbook by PaulMue0 with some significant differences.

So this is a template to write some recipes in a coherent cookbook with beautiful colors, appendices, indexes, and other stuffs in your language.

How to use it ?

You can use this template in the Typst web app by clicking “Start from template” on the dashboard and searching for fancy-cookbook.

Alternatively, you can use the CLI:

typst init @preview/fancy-cookbook

What’s in it ?

There is different functions to make your cookbook :

recipe: This function will help you write recipes with a very simple syntax, but it has advanced functions too to customize the render.
cookbook: This function will help you for the book itself, it’s the most important part. All of this needs the usage of cookbook and recipe. You’ll use this one before everything else, but for a better comprehension, I will describe this one after the recipe.
not-a-recipe: This one is here to help you write text in sections that not look like the recipes (there is more space here).
chapter: This function can create a new chapter with a change of palette.
cover-image: This one will help you put a cover image with a good integration to the cookbook.
back-cover-image: This one is the same as the previous but for the back cover.
set-all-palettes: this function help you to manually set all the pages where the palette changes.

Recipe

Minimal syntax to use it with an example:

#recipe(
  [Lychee whiskey],
  description: [Perfumed Whisky],
  servings: 6,
  prep-time: [2 min],
  cook-time: [10 min],
  ingredients: [
    - *1 l* flask empty and clean
    - *350 ml* of whisky
    - *150 g* of sugar
    - *1* vanilla stick
    - Some lychees
  ],
  instructions: [
    + Put the whisky, the sugar and the vanilla stick in the flask.
    + Add lychees in it the flask until the flask is full.
    + Let it macerate.
  ]
)

The first part, with the name, the description, servings, prep-time and cook-time is for the header part of the recipe that you can see here :

Recipe's header with the title, the subtitle, the serving, the preparation time and the cooking time

You can see the page header with the book’s title on the left and chapter title on the right and a line to separate from the header of the recipe which is also closed by a line

The second mandatory part is ingredients which as you can see is a content with a list. The third mandatory part is instructions which is a content with a numbered list.

This two parts will be dispatch in two columns. And all the body part of the recipe will be in the left or the right column. Here it is:

Recipe's body, where we can see the two columns with ingredients to the left and instructions to the right

That’s it for the simplest recipe, but we have other options. First of all we can have groups of ingredients and groups of instructions.

Groups of Ingredients or Instructions

#recipe([Something Cool],
  description: [An imaginary recipe],
  servings: 6,
  prep-time: [2 min],
  cook-time: [10 min],
  ingredients: (
    (
      title: [Dough],
      items: [
        - Some flour
        - Eggs
      ]
    ),
    (
      title: [Trim],
      items: [
        - Mandragora roots
        - Chili powder
        - Sugar
      ]
    )
  ),
  instructions: (
    (
      title: [Dough],
      steps: [
        + Put all together and mix
        + Cast a hot spell to make it burns
      ]
    ),
    (
      title: [Garnish],
      steps: [
        + Mix all together
        + And put all of these in the garbage
      ]
    )
  )
)

So you can see that we have replaced the content with lists of dictionaries. The two known dictionaries have a key named title. For the ingredients, the key items will accept a content with a list, as it was before. For the instructions, the key steps will accept a content with a numbered list as it was before.

And the result is :

Ingredients and Instructions grouped in blocks

As you can see the numbering continue even if the lists are in different groups.

Other optional properties

image-left and image-right

#recipe(
  [Lychee whiskey],
  description: [Perfumed Whisky],
  image-left: image("asset/whisky.png")  // image-right or both
)

You can add images to the recipe, one is for the left column and the other for the right one. This option can let you adjust your recipe to fit in one page if you want.

notes and notes-right

#recipe(
  [Lychee whiskey],
  description: [Perfumed Whisky],
  notes: [If you add some coriander at the end, it will be amazing.]
)

notes will be placed in a block in the left column. This is the default behavior and that’s why it’s not named notes-left. But sometimes, the only way for the recipe to fit in one page is to have notes on the right side, so you have notes-right.

authors

If you want like me to credit authors for each recipe individually — your grandmother, for instance, this property is for you. But there is two syntaxes, one when you only have one author :

#recipe(
  [Banana Jam],
  description: [Sweet Jam],
  authors: [GrandMa]
)

and if you have multiple authors :

#recipe(
  [Banana Jam],
  description: [Sweet Jam],
  authors: ([GrandMa],[GrandPa])
)

The label used will reflect this and if you have multiples, they will appear with ‘,’ between them.

label

This one is very important for me. You can add a label for your recipe and use it as a reference in other recipe. For example, you have a recipe for Pizza Dough and different pizza recipes. First, you put a label to a recipe, then you can put a reference of the first recipe anywhere and it will be replaced by something like “Pizza Dough(p. 17)”.

Here is a small example of usage :

#recipe(
  [Pizza Dough],
  description: [Base Dough for Pizza],
  label: <pizzaDough>
)
  
  
#recipe(
    [Peperoni Pizza],
    ingredients: [
      - @pizzaDough
    ]
)

sort-title

When you use tags, you will have indexes, and I try to sort the recipes by their name. But sometimes, you use functions in the title of your recipe, sometimes, you use accents, and the sorted index will not appear like you want. So you can set this property with a value that will be compared to others (title or sort-title).

change-palette

If you want to change the palette when you describe a recipe, this property will do this for you.

Cookbook

The minimal cookbook usage :

#show: cookbook.with(
  title: "My Cookbook",
  subtitle: "All that good"
)

#chapter[Soups]

#recipe(
    [Soup of the day]
)

You just need a title and a subtitle to make your cookbook. And then you can add chapter and recipes. But you can customize your cookbook with all the next properties.

paper

This property is used to define the size of the pages. You can see all the available options here Page Function at the paper property. The default size is “a4” and it was not tested with all the options available.

margin

If you want to control the margin of all the pages (except the cover), you can do it with this property

#show: cookbook.with(
  title: "My Cookbook",
  subtitle: "All that good",
  margin: (x: 2cm, top: 2.5cm, bottom: 2.5cm),
)

to set the values see Typst Documentation

subtitle, date and cover-image

All of these properties are used in the cover page with the title. Set values to see what changes.

By default, date is set as today and you can see the month and the year at the page bottom.

For the cover-image property, I recommend to use the built-in function cover-image like this:

cover-image: cover-image("assets/TonkotsuRamen.jpg"),

this will ensure that your image integrate with the cover with efficiency.

back-cover-content, back-cover-image and book-author

The back-cover is optional. But if you set a value for back-cover-content or back-cover-image the back-cover will appear. As the cover is at page 1 (impair page), the back-cover will always be in a pair page, to close your book.

As the name said, the back-cover-content property accept a content.

For the back-cover-image property, I recommend to use the built-in function back-cover-image like this:

back-cover-image: back-cover-image("assets/hearts.jpg"),

Finally, the book-author is visible only in the back cover page. So, if you set a value, you will see it in this page.

custom-cover and custom-back-cover

These properties let you design your own cover and back-cover and give it to the cookbook function:

#let cover = [
    = Nice Cover
    Some cool stuffs
]

#let back-cover = [
    = Nice Back Cover
    Some cool stuffs
]

#show: cookbook.with(
  title: "My Cookbook",
  custom-cover: cover,
  custom-back-cover: back-cover
)

front-matter and back-matter

You can have two other pages who appear at right for the front-matter, just after the cover and at left for back-matter just before the back cover. If you to print separatly the covers and the content like some services online, it’s better to do that to keep a good page numeration.

When I have used these properties, I dit it with the citation-block function that is described below.

colors and style

fancy-cookbook loves colors and is available with 17 colored palettes:

amber
blue
brown
coral
forest
green
grey
indigo
lagoon
lime
orange
pink
purple
rose
slate (the default one)
sunset
teal

You can see them in action in two styles :

A palette is something like this :

#let palette-lime = (
  dark: rgb("#4d9221"),
  medium: rgb("#a6d96a"),
  light: rgb("#f7fcb9")
)

So when you need to set a palette you can use one of these and I will show you how, or create your own. You only need to respect the 3 keys : dark, medium, and light.

For the cookbook function, the palette should be set like this :

#show: cookbook.with(
  title: "My Cookbook",
  subtitle: "All that good",
  palette: palette.blue
)

to use one of the palettes in the package.

Or you can do this :

#let palette-lime = (
  dark: rgb("#4d9221"),
  medium: rgb("#a6d96a"),
  light: rgb("#f7fcb9")
)

#show: cookbook.with(
  title: "My Cookbook",
  subtitle: "All that good",
  palette: palette-lime
)

to use yours. In this example, I used the palette lime that is already in the package.

If you want to change colors between chapters, like me, I recommand to use the chapter function that will be explained later.

Now it’s time to talk about style. This property has only effect on the ingredients block. There is 2 styles available :

flat: which is the default one, medium color for the border, light color for the background and dark color for the groups titles.
gradient : there is 2 differences.
- The background is now a gradient between the medium color and the light one.
- And to preserve contrast on the upper part, the dark color used for the groups titles is a little darker.

To set the gradient style for your book you can write:

#show: cookbook.with(
  title: "My Cookbook",
  subtitle: "All that good",
  style: style.gradient
)

custom-i18n

Translations is a part of this package. I have provided 4 languages in this version (and you can suggest others if you want on Github), but you can also provide your own version of the different labels.

The 4 languages are :

fr : for french
en : for english
es for spanish
pt : for portuguese

To set the current language in any part of the document you can use this instruction (which I recommend you to do every time, in all your document), example with french :

#set text(lang:"fr")

Do it before calling the cookbook function. You can also switch between recipe your language with this instruction, but I don’t know why you would do that.

Another way is to set the property lang of the cookbook function:

#show: cookbook.with(
  title: "My Cookbook",
  lang: "pt"
)

But this will apply the language only for the cookbook itself, your document will “stay” in English.

What can you do if your language is missing ?

You can add your own language by setting a dictionary with the labels to translate and use the custom-18n property. Here is the English version :

#let english = (
    en: (
      appendices: "Appendices",
      author: "AUTHOR",
      authors: "AUTHORS",
      index: "Thematic Index",
      ingredients: "INGREDIENTS",
      notes: "CHEF'S NOTES",
      page-short: "p.", // this will appear with labels and references
      preparation: "PREPARATION",
      toc: "Table of Contents"
    )
)

#show: cookbook.with(
  title: "My Cookbook",
  custom-i18n: english
)

And it will add your dictionary to the others. But you need to set the languages (#set text (lang:"fr")) with the one you have just added.

What if there is my language, but I want to use custom labels ?

Because the English language already exists, the previous example will not really add English (but this is true for an unknown one), your version will replace mine. But you can also, only change one label at a time like this :

#let english = (
    en: (
      toc: "Recipes"
    )
)

#show: cookbook.with(
  title: "My Cookbook",
  custom-i18n: english
)

And only the toc label will be changed.

chapter-start-right

The chapters appear as a separation page with a big title in the middle (it’s more like a part separation). I like it when this page is on the right side, so impair numbering page.

If you like it too, just add this property set to true like this :

#show: cookbook.with(
  title: "My Cookbook",
  chapter-start-right: true
)

custom-appendices

The appendices section appears at the end if you set this property or if you add some tags to the recipes.

This property adds what you want in the part, because it simply accepts content. In my cookbook I used it to add a glossary, but you can add a bibliography or whatever you want.

To set this property, I recommend to do it like that :

#let appendices = [
    = Nice
    Some cool stuffs
]

#show: cookbook.with(
  title: "My Cookbook",
  custom-appendices: appendices
)

custom-indexes

As I have said for the tags in the recipe function or just before in the custom-appendices properties, the appendices section appears with a tag in a recipe. And if we do nothing it will have an index called in English “Thematic Index”. This default index looks like the toc, but smaller. It will have all the keys you used as tags and the recipes that have this tags.

If you only have one type of information in your tags, it’s a good thing. But if you have different information like me (I used the location and type of recipe), you’ll probably want 2 different indexes. So with this property, you’ll replace the default index with yours.

Here is an example with locations and types :

#let location = (
    france: "France",
    spain: "Spain"
)

#let type = (
    dessert: "Dessert",
    meal: "Meal"
)

// a function to transform a dictionary to a list
#let dict-values(d) = d.keys().map(k => d.at(k))

#let indexes = (
  (
    title: [Recipe by Locations],
    tags: dict-values(location)
  ),
  (
    title: [Recipe by Types],
    tags: dict-values(type)
  )
)

#show: cookbook.with(
  title: "My Cookbook",
  custom-indexes: indexes
)

#recipe(
  [Banana Jam],
  description: [Sweet Jam],
  tags: (country.france, type.dessert)
)
  
  
#recipe(
  [Paella],
  description: [Very good],
  tags: (country.spain, type.meal)
)

only-recipes

This property will set off the cover, the toc, the back-cover and the appendices if you set it to true:

#show: cookbook.with(
  title: "My Cookbook",
  only-recipes: true
)

not-a-recipe

Simple to use but it’s optional. I have tried to minimize as much as possible the size of a recipe. So certain rules are not so nice when it’s not a recipe.

To add more space to a section with text, for explanations for example, I created this function for that purpose. Use it as follows:

#not-a-recipe(name: "Introduction")[
    Many things to say with *bold text* and whatever you want.
]

You can also change the palette like for recipe:

#not-a-recipe(name: "Introduction", change-palette: palette.lagoon)[
    Many things to say with *bold text* and whatever you want.
]

chapter

You can change the colors from a chapter in your document by using this command:

#chapter(change-palette: palette.green)[Main]

or another one or your custom palette. I used it for each chapter of my book (Starter, Main, Dessert, …) with different colors.

It’s important to understand that the change is not only for the current chapter. It’s start there and everything that follow will have the same. There’s only one exception, As the appendices section and the back-cover are parts of cookbook they keep the palette chosen from cookbook.

You can set a new chapter only (without changing colors) as follows:

#chapter[Main]

Or, if you prefer Markup:

= Main

And it’s easy to do that if you never change the palettes. It’s like you want.

You can also add a quote below your chapter title with these options:

#chapter(
  quote-content: [If you want to become a great chef, you have to work with great chefs. And that's exactly what I did.],
  quote-author: [Gordon Ramsay],
)[Main]

set-all-palettes

this function help you to manually set all the pages where the palette changes. When all your document is done you can choose manually every time you want to change colors like this:

#let pages-palettes = (
  (palette: palette.blue, page: 3),
  (palette: palette.green, page: 5),
  (palette: palette.rose, page: 8),
  (palette: palette.sunset, page: 10),
)
#set-all-palettes(pages-palettes)

citation-block

The citation block used in the chapter function can be used elsewhere. I dit it myself for the back-matter and front-matter of my book (in French):

#let palette-cookbook = palette.indigo

#let front-matter = citation-block(
  content: [La cuisine, c'est quand les choses ont le goût de ce qu'elles sont.],
  author: [Curnonsky],
  palette: palette-cookbook
)

#let back-matter = citation-block(
  content: [On apprend la cuisine avec celle des autres... à un moment donné on fait la sienne.],
  author: [Jean-François Piège],
  palette: palette-cookbook
)

#show: cookbook.with(
  title: [My Cookbook],
  subtitle: [So good],
  palette: palette-cookbook,
  front-matter: front-matter,
  back-matter: back-matter
)

I have set a value for the cookbook palette that I can use in the cookbook itself, the back-matter and the front-matter. It’s okay because in my book I have appendices that implicitly set the same palette as the one used initially by the cookbook itself. If you don’t have appendices, you can adjust the palette to be the same as the last one used.

Utility functions

There is 2 bonus functions that I use with this package.

dict-values

I use this function to convert a dictionary to a list of values. I prefer to use dictionaries for my tags and with this function I can easily create custom indexes. There is an example of usage in the custom indexes part, and also the code of this functions

show-metadata

I use this one for debugging. But if you want to see where the palette changes in the document, you need to do this:

#show-metadata(page-palette-meta-name)

Or if you want to see the metadata of the recipes (with tags):

#show-metadata(recipe-meta-name)

Examples

Finally, you can find examples in the Github Project

Create project in app

How to use

Click the button above to create a new project using this template in the Typst app.

You can also use the Typst CLI to start a new project on your computer using this command:


              typst init @preview/fancy-cookbook:2.0.0

About

Author:

Christophe Dos Santos

License:

MIT

Current version:

2.0.0

Last updated:

April 7, 2026

First released:

March 24, 2026

Minimum Typst version:

0.14.0

Archive size:

17.0 kB

Repository:

GitHub

Category:

Layout

Explore more packages by Christophe Dos Santos

Where to report issues?

This template is a project of Christophe Dos Santos. Report issues on their repository. You can also try to ask for help with this template on the Forum.

Please report this template to the Typst team using the contact form if you believe it is a safety hazard or infringes upon your rights.

Version history

Version	Release Date
2.0.0	April 7, 2026
1.0.0	March 24, 2026

Typst GmbH did not create this template and cannot guarantee correct functionality of this template or compatibility with any version of the Typst compiler or app.