Reflective Essay: A Reflection on the Transition from Academic Article to Recipe

In this essay, I will reflect on the convention decisions that I made when translating my

original peer reviewed article, “Yes Chef: life at the vanguard of culinary excellence” by Robin

Burrow, Chef John Smith and Christalla Yakinthou to a recipe called, “Haute Cuisine Chef”.

When given the prompt to translate my peer reviewed article into any genre, I wanted to stick

within the culinary realm and translate my article about fine dining chefs into a recipe. My

original article recounted the culinary journey of John Smith, a haute cuisine chef. The main

argument or purpose of this article is to shed insight to the reader on the extreme and possibly

illegal work culture of haute cuisine chefs like John Smith. Through a narrative story telling

technique, Chef Smith recounted his career starting as a commis chef and working his way up

the kitchen to achieving head chef status. His recount was filled with thrilling and exciting

moments of success with equally or if not more degrading, mundane, and dehumanizing

moments of abuse that back up the article's argument of shedding light on the undocumented

aggressive and criminal behavior of these fine dining chefs. This behavior was perpetuated and

even encouraged due to the militaristic, ‘macho man’ male dominated work culture where their

superiors at times beat the weakness out of them in order to assert dominance. Through reading

this text, I was able to identify the environment that was necessary to create a haute cuisine chef.

I wanted to translate this environment into a recipe using the conventions that make up this new

genre. In order to best transform this original article into a recipe, I had to make decisions on

what to add and what to leave out.

 The conventions between my two genres vary heavily. Through reading Karen

Rosenberg’s “Reading Games”, I was able to analyze the conventions of the peer reviewed

genre. The standard conventions of a peer reviewed article includes an abstract, an introduction,

literature review, methodology, results, conclusion, and acknowledgements. The tone and

structure is very formal and academic. The exigence of my peer reviewed article was found

throughout the text but was most prevalent in the abstract where the reader is giving a clear idea

of what the article is going to be about. The conventions of a recipe are vastly different from a

peer reviewed article. The first essential convention of a recipe is an introduction where the

author introduces their recipe. The second convention is a clearly laid out and measured list of

ingredients in the order of use. The next necessary convention is the instructions on how to use

the ingredients to make a recipe. The fourth convention is the prep time and yield of the recipe.

The fifth convention of a recipe are the visual elements. There are often photos of the final dish

and the ingredients used shown in the recipe. Another convention of a recipe is the laid back and

personable tone. This varies from the academic tone of a peer reviewed essay. Peer reviewed

articles often have visual elements such as graphs to show data similar to the visual elements in

recipes. In my second draft, I decided to add a formatting convention of a line that helps visually

separate the different blocks of my recipe.

The peer reviewed article recounted Chef John’s experience in the kitchen. The

information I had was his personal experience which is the industry standard and can be applied

generally for the purpose of creating a recipe. In order to accomplish my translation, I had to

pick out the experiences that he had and transform them into ingredients that could be used to

convey their working conditions. I left out specific details about his experience that couldn’t be

applied to all commis chef’s experiences. John recounted his stories in the kitchen, where he had
to carry 20 pound bags of potatoes, get kicked in the back of the legs by his superior, and beat up

one of his subordinates. I used these experiences to create my list of ingredients. This was a

specifically challenging portion of the translation. Figuring out the measurements for each

ingredient so it reflects how often they occur was difficult. As well as conveying the occurrence

of these events to the reader was challenging. I took what I learned from Irvin’s “Changing Your

Mindset on Revision” and applied it to my revision process as writing is a process of inquiry. I

took into account what my classmates commented and improved my first draft. My classmates

had a hard time understanding what the measurements meant in relation to workplace abuse. In

my second draft, I decided to add a notes portion to the ingredients explaining what the

measurements meant in relation to how often the abuse occurs. I went through the original article

and wrote down all possible ingredients I could include. I made sure to add all of the workplace

mistreatment that was essential and universal to most kitchens. Another challenging part of the

translation process was conveying my intended audience and exigence of my original article to

my recipe. In order to convey the original exigence of shedding light on the illegal workplace

culture of fine dining chefs, I decided to tell my audience about the illegal and hostile activities

that took place in the kitchen through the ingredients list. I also gave more context to the

audience through the introduction portion of my recipe. I highlighted my intended audience by

stating the purpose of my recipe is to educate home cooks and restaurant goers of the aggressive

work culture that they are commonly unaware of.

I tailored my translation to the expectations of my audience by changing the formal tone

of an academic article to a playful and engaging tone of a recipe. The audience expects a specific

tone from a recipe and if it was academic, the reader would be confused. I made sure to stick
with all the essential conventions of a recipe in my translation in order for the reader to clearly

identify the genre.

Citations

Burrow, R., Smith, J., & Yakinthou, C. (2015). ‘Yes Chef’: life at the vanguard of culinary

excellence. Work, Employment and Society, 29(4), 673-681.

Published in: British Sociological Association

https://doi-org.proxy.library.ucsb.edu/10.1177/0950017014563103

Karen Rosenberg’s “Reading Games”

Irvin’s “Changing Your Mindset on Revision”