How to Write a Recipe Card Google Loves

Google shows recipes differently from other pages. A good recipe result can have a photo, star ratings, cook time and calories right in the search results. Google builds that from structured data: a hidden, machine-readable copy of your recipe card. Get it right and your recipe looks like a dish worth clicking. Get it wrong and you look like every other link.

The good news: you don’t write any of it by hand. A proper recipe card plugin writes it for you from the fields you fill in. Your job is to fill in the right fields, the right way.

The two things Google requires

Google’s recipe guidelines require just two things: a name and an image. Everything else is “recommended”. Recommended matters, though. The more of the card you fill in, the more Google can show, and the better your chances of a rich result.

Everything else worth filling in

A short description. One or two sentences that make someone hungry. “Thin slices of beef in a sweet, garlicky pear marinade, seared hot and fast” beats “This is my favorite bulgogi recipe.”
Prep, cook and total time. People filter by time. A 25-minute dinner is a feature, so say so.
Yield or servings. “Serves 4” or “24 cookies”. It also powers servings scaling for your readers.
Ingredients, one per line. Amount, unit, ingredient, then any notes: “2 tbsp soy sauce”, not “some soy sauce”.
Instructions as separate steps. One step per line, so Google can read them as steps instead of one long paragraph.
Course and cuisine. “Dinner”, “Korean”. These help Google (and your readers) understand what the dish is.
Keywords. A few honest words people would search for, like “weeknight” or “sheet pan”.
Nutrition, if you have it. Calories are the one Google shows most.
Ratings. Stars only appear when real readers leave them, so switch ratings on and let them roll in.

Chef’s note: in a restaurant, nobody cooks from “a handful” or “cook until done”. Write your card the way a kitchen writes a prep list: exact amounts, clear times, one action per step. Google likes it for the same reason cooks do.

Photos: the part people skip

The photo is what gets the click. Google recommends high-resolution images and, where you can, the same photo in a few shapes: wide (16:9), classic (4:3) and square (1:1). Use a real photo of the finished dish, well lit, with the food filling the frame. A tiny thumbnail or a photo of your kitchen counter won’t cut it.

Only one recipe card per recipe

If a recipe appears in two places, only one of them should tell Google “this is the recipe”. Two plugins, or a card copied into two posts, can give Google two competing versions of the same dish. Pick one home for each recipe.

Check your work

Paste your recipe’s address into Google’s free Rich Results Test. It shows exactly what Google sees and flags anything missing. Once your site is in Google Search Console, the Recipes report shows problems across your whole blog, not just one post.

How Scrumptious handles it

Scrumptious writes Google’s recipe data automatically from your card, including steps, times, yield, course, cuisine and ratings. You don’t need to fill in a form field by field: paste the recipe the way you wrote it and Scrumptious sorts it into the card. Then give it a quick check, add a great photo, and publish.

Want the details? The help article on Google recipe data lists every field Scrumptious sends.