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cookbook n.
[from amateur electronics and radio] A book of small code segments that the reader can use to do various [magic] things in programs. One current example is the "[PostScript] Language Tutorial and Cookbook" by Adobe Systems, Inc (Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-10179-3), also known as the [Blue Book] which has recipes for things like wrapping text around arbitrary curves and making 3D fonts. Cookbooks, slavishly followed, can lead one into [voodoo programming], but are useful for hackers trying to [monkey up] small programs in unknown languages. This function is analogous to the role of phrasebooks in human languages.