I look up the recipe every time I boil an egg.

A Pattern Language also includes

184 Cooking Layout
[....]
Therefore:
To strike the balance between the kitchen which is too small, and the kitchen which is too spread out, place the stove, sink, and food storage and counter in such a way that:
1. No two of the the four are more than 10 feet apart.
2. The total length of the counter - excluding sink, stove, and refrigerator - is at least 12 feet.
3. No one section of the counter is less than 4 feet long.
There is no need for the counter to be continuous or entirely "built in" as it is in many modern kitchens - it can even consist of free-standing tables or counter tops. Only the three functional relationships described above are critical.

I haven't measured my kitchen, but I feel that it's in many ways the easiest I've ever lived with and certainly it has the proximity. I suspect it only gets to 12 feet of counter if I count the table as part of it and that's not in the workspace bit. One of the things I love about it is that it's kind of D shaped so that the kids rush past along the straight upright of the D and I stand in the fat tummy of the D and putter away. I've been surprised at how well the kitchen works because it looked little compared to our old one.

Does it make me cook any more or better? Well, probably not, but perhaps less grumpily. I've no idea what I used to cook before fresh Tortellini was available. I vaguely remember I used to make sauce as well as pasta.