Receipt conceit
Sir: A few weeks ago (Letters, 26 June), a reader criticised an affectation which had crept into your food columns — namely, the use of receipt instead of recipe. This prompted a • curiously ill-informed correspondence about the history of the two words, in which assorted wiseacres scored sterile debating points against one another.
In the context of your food writers' fool- ish affectation, it matters little which word is the older, or what they meant two cen- turies ago.
The important question is what the words mean now; and that is perfectly clear. A recipe is a cookery formula; a receipt is an acknowledgement of receiving goods or payment. This distinction has been firmly established in current English usage for over a century.
Hence to describe a cookery recipe as a receipt is at best a pretentious conceit, and at worst a gross solecism. Such showy, self- conscious archaisms are the sign of a writer who has no feel for the vigour of our living language. I regard The Spectator as a haven for robust modern English writing, and I do not expect it to give house-room to stylistic poseurs.
Desmond Quirke
14 Glen View, Halifax, Yorkshire
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