I am looking for some advice on what some mnemonic tricks could be for remembering the following, when memorizing or preparing to cook a recipe by heart:
Thank you very much.
Thanks.
The best 'trick' is to understand why a certain temperature, ingredient or quantity is used, which comes from reading good recipes, cooking with others who have more experience, and practice and experimentation.
The second 'trick' is to get used to what details are important or specific to one recipe. Once you realise that lots of different dishes are in fact very similar in construction, you stop thinking in terms of memorising specific instruction lists. Don't think "180°C", think "default oven temperature". Don't think "add 1.5 tsp salt to 1 litre simmering water", think "this needs boiling, so I need a pan of boiling water and that always needs salt". Instead of "50g chicken breast", "that looks about right for one meal for me".
In other words, when you see someone cooking without looking at a recipe, it's not that they are mentally consulting a memorized recipe and following its steps. They just combine their knowledge of cooking methods with what they have and what they are trying to make. An analogy might be someone travelling across a city they know well – they aren't following a memorized list of directions, they just know the general way to go and how to navigate each part along the way.
The place for mnemonics is in remembering specific baking recipes where it is more important to get the ratios of ingredients and temperatures precise, and there are some of these out there for classic cakes. But my recommendation would just be to cook with a recipe to hand; now that we have the internet and smartphones it's easy to get high quality recipes and you don't have to worry you've forgotten something.
This might not be exactly what you're looking for, but my "mnemonic trick" is ratios.*
Many complex recipes are really just an amalgamation of several simple recipes, and many simple recipes can be reduced to a ratio of 2-4 ingredients, plus seasoning to taste.
For example, the ratio of a basic roux-based sauce is 1 part flour, 1 part fat/oil, 8 parts liquid. The ratio for cooking grits is 1 part grits to 4 parts liquid, plus salt. This vastly simplifies a recipe for shrimp and grits, to:
Baking is even more ratio-driven.
(* I do recommend the book linked from that article, Michael Ruhlman's Ratio)
I'll speak to oven temps. The rest is probably more specific to what you are cooking and understanding why procedures work and when to use them, which comes with experience, rather than having and overarching mnemonic.
So, about oven temperature...all you really need to know is low, medium, and high. Ovens are rarely the temperature that it says on the dial setting (they are not built for accuracy), and the temperature around your food is much lower than you think (due to evaporative cooling). It turns out that being in the ballpark is good enough. Just think in terms of low (up to 300F), medium (up to 400F), and high. Not much happens at low...perhaps a braise that you started on the stove in a dutch oven and moved to the oven...think gentle heat for a long time...or maybe those ribs that you are cooking "low and slow." Most of your oven work happens at medium or high. Roast a chicken?...high.....Sheet pan of squash? Medium.... Apple crisp? ...medium. Just keep an eye on it and and you will soon get a feel without worrying about having to know specific temperatures.
