How to convert handwritten recipes into a PDF recipe book — A step-by-step guide.

There’s something undeniably special about handwritten recipes — especially the ones passed down through the generations, given to you by a friend or colleague, or your handwritten notes and tweaks to your signature dishes and culinary creations for which you are known. Humanity has been writing and recording escapades in the kitchen long before blogs, vlogs, and the ability to download digital recipes.

Combine the best of both worlds by converting your handwritten recipes into a PDF recipe book. You’ll preserve those precious memories and traditions and put them into a format that you too can pass on to generations to come. Read on to learn step by step how you can easily convert handwritten recipes into a PDF recipe book.

What you’ll learn

• The advantages of creating digital recipe books
• A step-by-step guide for converting handwritten recipes to a PDF recipe book
• Preserving, protecting, and sharing the love in your PDF recipe book

Advantages of creating digital recipe books.

There are many good reasons for keeping handwritten recipes. Not only do they become treasured family heirlooms — the unique penmanship and writing styles, the types of ingredients and the cooking methods used, and the family traditions they often represent mean they can become unique and irreplaceable records of and memories of people we have known and loved that have come before us.

Nonetheless, it doesn’t take long for handwritten recipes to become a collection of food-stained pieces of paper that you “file” away in a drawer, box, or cupboard for later use. Sorting through them and looking for the one you want becomes a food journey in and of itself. Over time, ink fades, food smudges discolour the paper, and you’re at risk of the recipe disintegrating in your hands before you even reach for the ingredients in the pantry!

Converting handwritten and paper recipes to PDF preserves the format and original look of that handwritten recipe. Yes, you can re-type recipes into digital documents if you wish. But you can also scan to PDF with your phone to preserve the original image. You’ve then got a digital record of those recipes that you can securely and safely store, and easily share with others.

When you convert handwritten recipes to PDF, you’ll create a digital recipe book that has a few advantages over ink and paper. These include —

• Accessibility.
  PDF cookbooks are easily accessible from any device. You can refer to that recipe on your phone, laptop, or tablet wherever you are. They’re accessible in the here and now, and you can easily keep a backup copy for safekeeping-.

• Interactivity.
  You can include multimedia elements, such as photos and videos to enhance the visual presentation and make instructions easier to follow.

• Searchability.
  Handwritten recipes converted to PDF using OCR technology are searchable. This saves you time when you’re looking for specific recipes or ingredients.

• Shareability.
  Preserve and protect those recipes from your grandmother to pass on to the next generation, make a recipe book of quick and easy meals to prepare for someone first leaving home, or create a collection of travel-inspired dishes from around the world to share with others. The possibilities of recipe books to create, share, and give as personal gifts are endless.

• Adaptability.
  You can easily update digital cookbooks as and when you want to refine or customize individual recipes or add new ones.

Step-by-step guide for converting handwritten recipes to PDF.

Converting handwritten recipes into a PDF recipe book is not just a technical process ؅— you can make it a celebration of your culinary heritage. Breathe new life and creativity into those cherished handwritten recipes and gather them up to tell your story.

Step 1 — Organize and sort your paper and handwritten recipes.

Start by collecting and collating all your recipes that are written down on paper. It doesn’t matter if they’re on scraps of paper, index cards, in notebooks, or scribbled alongside a recipe in a book — you can easily scan them all.

Organize your recipes into categories, and ideally the sequence you want them in your PDF recipe book. Start with your recipes following the basic flow and structure that you want for your recipe book, and you’ll save time later.

For example, you could organise your recipes into —

• Meals — breakfast, lunch, dinner, desserts, snacks
• Occasions — Christmas, Easter, birthdays, barbecues, picnics, parties
• Types of cuisine.

Step 2 — Scan your recipes from your phone with Adobe Scan.

Download and install the free Adobe Scan mobile app to your smartphone.

This very clever app uses optical character recognition (OCR) technology to recognize the text in documents. It will convert handwriting to PDF files that you can search, but at the same time, it will retain the original formatting so you can keep your recipes looking authentic.

You can scan to PDF and/or save your recipes as JPEG images. You can also crop, rotate, add filters to your recipes, and more.

Your saved files can be accessed and downloaded from the Adobe Scan mobile application, Adobe Acrobat Online, and/or an Adobe Acrobat application.

Step 3 — Create your PDF recipe book.

You can combine your PDF files into one recipe book in Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Acrobat Online. Some of the features to use when creating your PDF recipe book include —

• Merge PDF files to combine single PDF files into one PDF recipe book.
• Add PDF pages when you want to insert a new recipe or add a page.
• Rearrange PDF pages if you want to change the sequence of your recipes.
• Rotate PDF pages if you find you’ve got a recipe upside down or sideways.
• Add PDF page numbers to make it easier to see what page you’re on.

Step 4 — Add visual appeal.

Enhance the visual appeal of your PDF recipe book by adding text, images, and photos. You can edit a PDF to add text, insert an image, draw freehand, circle key points or sections, and more.

Step 5 — Make your PDF recipe book interactive.

You can make your PDF recipe book even more user-friendly by adding bookmarks and hyperlinks to help navigate between recipes, pages, and different sections.

Want to teach your grandkids how your grandmother made her fluffy melt-in-the-mouth pavlova? Film yourself making her recipe and insert the video file into your PDF recipe book for them to see how it’s done.

Preserving, protecting, and sharing the love in your PDF recipe book.

After you’ve created your PDF recipe book, review the security settings to protect any content you don’t want changed. You can password-protect PDFs to prevent others from making changes. You can also protect those “top secret” recipes with a password to open the document.

Be sure to save your PDF recipe book in a location on your device you can find again, and back up your file to cloud storage or an external hard drive. That way, those handwritten recipes that you have taken the time to preserve, will be safe, secure, and accessible for generations to come.

Related content.

Continue cooking and creating! Check out some of our other articles to help with using PDFs at home —

• How to make a PDF grocery budget
• Get cooking with PDFs for recipes and meal planning
• How to organise recipes