return type is less accessible than method

Question

I am new to c# and here is an excerpt from a personal project i am working on to get some experience.

When calling the getRecipe() function outside this class i am presented with the following error. I want to keep my List private to the CookBook class but still be able to get a reference to one of the Recipes in the List. I do not want to make my List public.

Any advice is greatly appreciated! Thanks

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The error

return type 'cookbook.Recipe is less accessible than method 'cookbook.CookBook.getRecipe(string)'

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public class CookBook
{
    private List<Recipe> listOfRecipes = new List<Recipe> {};
    public Recipe getRecipe(string name)
    {
        int i = 0;
        while (listOfRecipes[i].getRecipeName() != name)
        {
            i++;
        }
        return listOfRecipes[i];
    }
}

Answer 1

Make the Recipe class public.

Answer 2

Your Recipe class is less accessible than the method. You should check that Recipe is not private/internal and that you can see the Recipe class from outside that class scope (quick fix declare Recipe a public class).

As pointed out by Michael Stum in a comment below classes without an access modifier are by default either internal or private (if it's a nested class). This is possibly where your issue is and you may have just declared class Recipe instead of public class Recipe