Proper Names

Q. How are recipe titles treated within text? Do they use uppercase? Quotation marks?

A. Names of recipes fall somewhere between common and proper names, neither of which deserves quotation marks. Although it’s usual to see a headline-capped title at the top of a recipe, in the text caps are not obligatory, especially if the use is generic: my sister’s recipe for pecan pie, as opposed to my aunt’s recipe for Peppy Pecan Pie.