Code Kitchen

Cook strange recipes. Serve real output.

Recipe Card

Served Output

Nothing has been served yet.

Ingredient Shelf

The pantry is empty.

Mixing Bowl

The bowl is clean.

Baking Dish

No dish is prepared.

Chef's Notes

No notes yet.

What is Chef?

Chef is an esoteric programming language where programs are written as cooking recipes. It was designed by David Morgan-Mar in 2002. Although it looks humorous, it uses real programming concepts: variables, stacks, arithmetic, and output.

In Code Kitchen, you write a Chef recipe in the editor, and the interpreter parses and executes it step by step — so you can see exactly how stacks and variables work behind the scenes.

Recipe Structure

Every Chef program follows this structure:

1

Title — The first line. Ends with a period. This is the recipe name.

2

Comment — Optional. Any text between the title and "Ingredients." is a description.

3

Ingredients. — Declares variables. Each line: value unit name (e.g. 72 g haricot beans).

4

Method. — The executable instructions. One command per line, each ending with a period.

5

Serves N. — Optional. Marks how many servings (used for output in the full spec).

Key Concepts

Ingredients = Variables

Each ingredient is a variable with a numeric value. The name can be multiple words (e.g. "haricot beans").

Mixing Bowl = Stack

The mixing bowl is a stack (last in, first out). Put pushes to the top. Fold pops from the top. Arithmetic affects the top item only.

Baking Dish = Output

The baking dish is the output buffer. Pour copies the bowl contents into the dish. When the program ends, the dish contents become the output.

Liquefy = ASCII

Liquefy converts numbers to characters using ASCII codes (e.g. 72 → 'H', 101 → 'e'). This is how Chef programs produce text output.

Command Reference

Command	What it does	Stack operation
`Put <ingredient> into the mixing bowl.`	Push ingredient's value onto the stack	PUSH
`Fold <ingredient> into the mixing bowl.`	Pop top value and store it in the ingredient	POP
`Add <ingredient> to the mixing bowl.`	Add ingredient's value to top of stack	top += value
`Remove <ingredient> from the mixing bowl.`	Subtract ingredient's value from top of stack	top −= value
`Combine <ingredient> into the mixing bowl.`	Multiply top of stack by ingredient's value	top ×= value
`Divide <ingredient> into the mixing bowl.`	Divide top of stack by ingredient's value	top ÷= value
`Liquefy contents of the mixing bowl.`	Convert all values in the bowl to characters (ASCII)	chr()
`Stir the mixing bowl for N minutes.`	Roll the top element down N positions	ROTATE
`Pour contents of the mixing bowl into the baking dish.`	Copy bowl contents to the output dish	COPY → dish
`Clean the mixing bowl.`	Empty the bowl (remove all values)	CLEAR
`Refrigerate [for N hours].`	End execution and serve the output	HALT

How Output Works

Push ingredient values onto the mixing bowl using Put.
Optionally use arithmetic (Add, Remove, Combine, Divide) to modify values.
Use Liquefy to convert numbers into characters (if you want text output).
Use Pour to copy the bowl contents into the baking dish.
Use Refrigerate to end execution. The baking dish contents become the program output.

Tip: Without Liquefy, values are output as numbers. With it, they are output as characters. The value 72 becomes 'H' because chr(72) = 'H' in ASCII.

Quick Example

This recipe adds 5 + 3 and outputs the result:

Number Stew.

Ingredients.
5 g apples
3 g pears

Method.
Put apples into the mixing bowl.
Add pears to the mixing bowl.
Pour contents of the mixing bowl into the baking dish.
Refrigerate for 1 hour.

Serves 1.

1 Put apples → pushes 5 onto the bowl. Bowl: [5]

2 Add pears → adds 3 to the top. Bowl: [8]

3 Pour → copies bowl to dish. Dish: [8]

4 Refrigerate → output is "8"

Useful ASCII Values

32 = space 33 = ! 48 = 0 65 = A 66 = B 67 = C 72 = H 97 = a 98 = b 99 = c 100 = d 101 = e 108 = l 111 = o 114 = r 119 = w

Full table: A-Z = 65–90, a-z = 97–122, 0-9 = 48–57