Several of my mother's cookbooks contain recipes (usually marked by sticky notes for easier location later) that have notations scribbled in the margins pretty much exactly as silveradept says. If one is allergic to writing in books, one could photocopy the recipe and scribble in the margin of that, or type it up with annotations.

I suspect the vast majority of Mom's such notations were added before the dinner dishes were dealt with the night each such recipe was first deemed a keeper.