This cartoon was actually inspired by an earlier cartoon of mine:
“Reaction to the news was mixed, largely because we asked more than one person.”
I’d run across it while doing some work on my site, and the word “mixed” all of a sudden popped out at me, suggesting mixing ingredients for a recipe.
So the idea for the joke came pretty easily, but presenting the recipe succinctly in the caption probably took me a good hour of rewrites.
Homophones. A fine source of comedy cartoons.