A Bug's Life

Yes, I also use a hardback notebook for my most frequently used - I also copy key recipes out of books into it so that when I go on OUSFG holidays etc I have everything I might want in one small book. If you've got loads then ring-binder is probably the way to go.
Two major points in favour of the Luddite approach are a) cutting and pasting can be done while watching telly, unlike typing or (probably) scanning and hence is a less free-time-consuming job.
b) you probably have quite a lot of random info about the most frequently used recipes already stored in your wetware (eg From Guardian, slightly stained, in mother's handwriting, on back of brown envelope) and therefore once you've got it into some sort of order, even the vaguest filing system (starters, meat, fish, veg, puddings, misc) will narrow it down enough for you to scan through for the relevant typeface. If you scan or retype then all that lovely information will be lost, and you'll probably have to do a proper index job (or, more likely, start to do a proper index job and then lose interest a third of the way through).

I rely heavily on my mother's loose-leaf cookbook, which she has in Wordperfect on her computer, and has indexed by category in the hard copy. I'm sure there is software out there. You should be able to do it with a good database program, but setting it up would be a real bear.