how to make clear recipe indications to the player?

I don't know if this is the right forum but it's the closest i could find.

so, I'm making a mod with a custom workbench. the workbench allows in slot 1 any food item and slot 2, 5 different potential items.

How do i go about indicating to the player what the recipes are in-game (not through a wiki, preferably)?

unless adding "custom recipes" to jei is possible, i don't suppose i could use jei since it is a custom workbench

I could use a custom book that is given at spawn, but that consumes one inventory space and so many mods use that technique that players end up having 52 books at spawn, so i'd rather not have to use this.

or i could put it in the workbench ui in some way? i can't include the image, but does anyone have an idea on how i could integrate these recipes into the ui? (aka represent 5 items) do i use an outline that shifts based on the possible items, similarly to a smithing table?