That depends on which of our themes you are using!
As of 2020, we no longer recommend using recipe index pages at all. A good site structure will reduce click depth from the homepage to as many posts as possible. To support this, you should be using category pages as your second tier, not the recipe index. See:
Our Cook'd Pro theme allows for as many pages that work like the recipe index as you'd like. This has been a common request from our customers and we've been listening!
Note: The sidebar items will remain the same from one index to the next, but you can use multiple pages with the recipe index template.
See our Cook'd Pro Recipe Index tutorial.
Foodie Pro and Brunch Pro Recipe Index Pages
Foodie Pro and Brunch Pro are not styled to work that way out of the box. However, it is possible to accomplish multiple pages that respond like the recipe page.
You'll want to create a new page template, add new widget areas in functions, and add the code to the stylesheet. Here is a tutorial that explains how to get that all setup.
There is also this tutorial available that may be helpful to you. It involves using a paid plugin if you are open to that.
Just a note that these tutorials are not ours and we are unable to provide support for customizations to the theme, we just do our best to share resources when we know of them.
If you would like to get hired help, we can recommend the following as knowledgeable and reliable development services:
- https://onehappystudio.com
- https://codeable.io/
Recipe Index Page Design
You want to avoid "shallow" pages, which recipe index pages are susceptible to. "Shallow" pages are pages that contain little or no useful content, and while displaying an index of recipes to your users can be seen as "useful", it won't contain anything significant to search engines.
We recommend adding a couple paragraphs of content about why you've created an index recipe page for this particular ingredient or recipe.
For example, when making a recipe index page for "gluten free recipes", you can talk about why certain gluten free alternatives are used in some recipes and not in others. Some gluten free flours for example, can only partially replace regular flour in most recipes, and require a "binder" like brown rice flour to make it bake properly.
You can talk about your experiments that failed, tips and tricks you learned and any other adjustments that need to be made (more salt?).
Treat recipe index pages as full on posts, excluding the images you would normally use. Let the thumbnails from the recipes draw the users attention and design your call-to-action around visiting those recipes.