[Quoth]

Main course meals don't need recipes as such, but cakes, desserts, buns, biscuits, cookies, pastries do.

Some things you only do once, like trying to make soup in a pressure cooker with tinned peas and chopped pork sausage. Bright green with white lumps.

There are plenty of good free recipie books on Gutenberg. You don't need photos or even illustrations. They have Mrs Beeton's Household management which is not a good starting point now. Current supermarket custard is not the same thing at all as Mrs Beeton's which does need a recipe and might have been 300 years old then.