Recipe Schema Guide: Rich Results for Food Websites

Short answer: Recipe schema is a JSON-LD block that describes a recipe page: its name, images, ingredients, steps, cooking times, yield, ratings and nutrition. When the markup is complete and matches the visible page, search engines can show the recipe as a rich result with a photo, a rating and a cooking time, and can include it in recipe carousels. The usual failures are missing images, times in the wrong format, ratings that do not match the page and markup placed on pages that are not recipes. Validate every template once, then watch the enhancement report in Search Console.

Food websites compete on a crowded results page where almost every result has a picture, a star rating and a time. A plain blue link looks poor next to them. Recipe structured data is the standard way to give search engines the details they need to build those richer results. This guide explains which fields matter, how to write them so that they match the page, what breaks most often and how to check the result after publishing. It assumes nothing beyond the ability to edit a template or a plugin setting.

What Recipe schema is and where it appears

Recipe is a type defined by schema.org and supported by Google’s recipe rich result. The markup is usually written as JSON-LD inside a script tag in the page head or body. A page with valid markup may be shown as a single rich result with image, rating, cook time and sometimes calories, or as part of a carousel of recipes at the top of a results page, or in a host carousel when a list page links to several recipes on the same site. Voice assistants and some AI search systems also use the same fields to read out steps or to summarise a recipe. The markup does not guarantee a rich result; it makes one possible. For the general rules of markup, start with structured data for AI search and the basics of JSON-LD versus microdata.

Required and recommended fields

Only a few fields are required for the markup to be valid, but most of the visual benefit comes from the recommended ones. The table below lists the fields that matter most and what to put in them.

Field	Status	Notes
name	Required	The recipe title as it appears on the page.
image	Required	One or more URLs; provide 1:1, 4:3 and 16:9 crops of a high-resolution photo.
author	Recommended	A Person or Organization with a name.
datePublished	Recommended	ISO 8601 date.
description	Recommended	A short sentence about the dish.
prepTime, cookTime, totalTime	Recommended	ISO 8601 durations, for example PT20M or PT1H30M.
recipeYield	Recommended	Servings or quantity, such as “4 servings”.
recipeIngredient	Recommended	One string per ingredient with quantity.
recipeInstructions	Recommended	HowToStep items in order, optionally grouped in HowToSection.
nutrition	Recommended	NutritionInformation with calories and optionally other values.
aggregateRating	Recommended	Only when real user ratings are shown on the page.
keywords, recipeCategory, recipeCuisine	Optional	Short descriptive values, no stuffing.
video	Optional	A VideoObject when the page embeds a recipe video.

Everything in the markup should be visible on the page in some form. A rating in the markup without a visible rating, or a cooking time in the markup that differs from the text, can lead to the rich result being removed and, in repeated cases, to a manual action for structured data problems.

Writing the image, time and yield fields correctly

Images are the most common reason a recipe page fails validation. The image must be a crawlable URL, not blocked by robots.txt, large enough to be useful, and ideally provided in three aspect ratios so that it fits every layout. A lazy-loaded image is fine as long as the URL in the markup points to the full-size file. Practical advice on file names, sizes and formats is in the image SEO guide.

Times must be ISO 8601 durations. Writing “20 minutes” in the markup is an error, while PT20M is correct. Total time should equal preparation plus cooking plus any resting time that the recipe mentions. Yield is a plain string or a number; keep it consistent with the servings shown on the page. If the recipe scales dynamically with a slider, mark up the default values.

Ingredients, instructions and nutrition

List each ingredient as one string with quantity and unit, exactly as a cook would read it. Do not merge several ingredients into one line and do not include section headings as ingredients. Instructions work best as an ordered list of HowToStep objects, each with a text property and, optionally, a name, an image and a URL that jumps to the step on the page. Group steps into HowToSection objects when the recipe has distinct parts, such as a filling and a crust. Numbered steps on the page should match the markup one to one.

Nutrition is optional but widely used. Provide calories at minimum, as a string such as “320 calories”, and add fat, carbohydrates and protein if you show them. Make sure the figures refer to one serving and that the page says so. If you do not have reliable nutrition data, leave the field out rather than guessing; wrong values do more harm to trust than a missing value.

Ratings and reviews without breaking the rules

Star ratings attract clicks, which is why so many sites mark them up incorrectly. The rules are simple: an aggregateRating must come from real user ratings collected on your site, the count and the value must be visible on the page, and self-serving ratings written by the site owner are not allowed. Do not copy ratings from another platform into your markup, and do not mark up a rating on a page that shows no rating. The details and the risks are covered in review schema and star ratings. If your recipe plugin generates ratings from a widget that most visitors never see, move the widget into view or remove the rating from the markup.

Common errors and how to fix them

Missing field “image”. Add at least one crawlable, high-resolution image URL; check that the CDN does not block crawlers.
Invalid duration. Convert minutes and hours into ISO 8601 format and recalculate totalTime.
Recipe markup on non-recipe pages. Category pages, roundups and the homepage should not carry a single Recipe object. Use ItemList for a roundup that links to recipe pages.
Two Recipe objects on one page. Plugins and themes sometimes both output markup. Keep one source.
Mismatch with the page. Different title, different number of steps or ingredients, or a rating that is not shown. Fix the page or the markup until they agree.
Markup inside noindex pages or blocked by JavaScript. Make sure the JSON-LD is present in the rendered HTML that crawlers receive; see JavaScript content and AI crawlers.
Truncated or escaped JSON. A single unescaped quote in an ingredient breaks the whole block. Generate JSON with a library, not by string concatenation.

A broader method for diagnosing warnings and errors is in how to fix structured data errors.

Recipe pages in AI answers

AI assistants answer many cooking questions directly, and they often cite recipe pages when the page states the key facts clearly: time, servings, ingredients and the one thing that makes the recipe different. Structured data helps because it makes those facts unambiguous. Keep the introduction short and factual, put the recipe card high on the page, and use clear headings for substitutions, storage and troubleshooting, since those are the follow-up questions people ask. Long personal stories before the recipe do not hurt the markup, but they make the useful part harder to find for readers and for extraction. Guidance on writing passages that get quoted is in how to write content that AI answers quote.

Testing and monitoring

Test one page per template with the Rich Results Test and with the schema.org validator, then fix the template rather than individual pages. After publishing, check the recipe enhancement report in Search Console, which lists valid items, items with warnings and errors across the site. Warnings do not block a rich result, but errors do. Re-test after any plugin update, since recipe plugins change their output over time.

A site audit catches the problems that sit outside the markup itself: pages with recipe markup that are noindexed, images blocked for crawlers, duplicate pages that split ratings and slow pages that lose the click after it is won. Site SEO AI Audit crawls your site, scores it across seven areas including structured data, and ranks the fixes by the points they add. The first audit of up to 200 pages is free; see the pricing page for re-audits and larger sites.

The bottom line

Recipe schema is worth doing well on every food site. Provide the required name and images, add times, yield, ingredients, steps and nutrition in the correct formats, mark up ratings only when they are real and visible, keep one Recipe object per recipe page and test each template. Then monitor the enhancement report so that a plugin update does not silently take your rich results away.

FAQ

Does Recipe schema guarantee a rich result?

No. Valid markup makes a rich result possible. Search engines decide whether to show it based on the page, the query and the quality of the site.

Can I add Recipe markup to a page that lists ten recipes?

Not as a single Recipe. Use an ItemList that points to each recipe page, or mark up each recipe fully if the whole recipe is on the list page.

Which image sizes should I provide?

Use a high-resolution photo and supply crops in 1:1, 4:3 and 16:9 ratios so that the result fits different layouts. The URLs must be crawlable.

What if I do not have nutrition information?

Leave the nutrition field out. Guessed values can mislead readers and damage trust. Add it later when you have reliable figures per serving.

My plugin already adds markup. Do I need to do anything?

Check one page in the Rich Results Test and make sure the theme is not adding a second Recipe object. Then confirm that ratings and times shown on the page match the markup.