Minecraft recipes before wiki?

I'm curious and wondering. How did people find crafting recipe for minecraft?

I know there's a lot of recipes in the wiki and such. But I wonder how did they find the recipe without it (say, the one who write it on wiki for the first time)?

I discovered some of the recipes myself, which was so much fun. But I don't think I would find cake recipe without peeking at the wiki. How… How do people find cake recipe? Or tnt. Or portal. Or.
Did they accidentally luckily find it? Were they hardcore gamer who tried like almost all possibilities? Or there were some official guides? Or maybe they happened to be a friend of the developer? Lol

just curious, tho. I don't judge people who find recipe by trial-and-error or by wiki. As long as they enjoy playing it, that's cool.

I think it was explained in high detail on the update page (Not the launch screen, minecraft.net)

The recipes were probably posted somewhere by notch when he first made the game public.

Any new recipes are probably covered in the update blogs on the Mojang page. (I don't read them, so not sure)