A recipe is an effect chain with every setting exposed. Rather than a preset that hides what it did, you can see which algorithms ran, in what order, at what values, and change any of them.
Open a recipe with your own image and it applies the whole chain immediately. From there the values are all live, so a recipe is as much a teaching tool as a shortcut: it shows you the resolution, contrast and algorithm choices that produce a particular look.
Because everything is deterministic, a recipe produces the same relationship between input and output every time, which is what makes it worth saving in the first place.
A recipe records the full chain: which effects, in what order, and every parameter each one is running at, including the working resolution, contrast and brightness applied before the chain starts.
That last part is the one people usually miss when trying to copy a look from a screenshot. Most of the character of a dithered or halftoned image comes from the resolution and contrast set before the algorithm ran, not from the algorithm itself, and a recipe makes those visible.
Any chain you build in the editor can be saved as a recipe and reapplied to another image, or to a whole batch. That is what makes a series look like a series: the same treatment applied identically rather than approximated by eye each time.
Because everything is deterministic, a saved recipe does not drift. Applied to the same image a year later it produces the same pixels.
A preset applies a look and hides how. A recipe exposes every setting in the chain, so you can see and change what it did.
Yes, through batch mode, which runs one chain across a set of images and returns a ZIP. Batch export is a Pro feature.