And this only increases with the experience of the chefs involved. When an experienced chef discusses a dish with another experienced chef, they will talk in common high-level abstractions like roux and emulsifier without going into detail in how to first make those components.
And then at the next level up is complete base recipes, like "this is essentially a bearnaise except with _____" or "you start with a ______ but instead of _____ you _____". So the recipes are expressed with combinators over modifiers and existing recipes.
Love it.
This reminds me of a website called Cooking For Engineers[1] which uses diagrams to represent the parallel and sequential parts of a recipe (e.g. [2]).
[1] http://www.cookingforengineers.com/
[2] http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/172/Pan-Pizza/trn
- Wash the rice - Boil the rice gently for 20 mins - Whilst the rice is cooking, sauté the finely diced onions.. - Before they've turned brown...