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Show HN: Find the best recipe for any two foods, based on over 600k recipes
- overcast 11y agoI like this, are you planning on opening up an API? I could use this feature for http://imadefood.com http://imadefood.com that I launched a few weeks ago. Might be able to work something mutually beneficial.
- qrv3w 11y agoCertainly, I could add an API. Find me on Twitter @zack_118 and lets chat.
- struct 11y agoSuper neat! I love this concept and I will totally use it. I particularly like its speed.
- qrv3w 11y agoThanks. Its actually a static site, to help with the speed.
- nightbrawler 11y agoVery cool idea! As I was going through the top pairings I noticed a strange pair of "milk and poi" ...it looks like it's picking up the word "points" as an ingredient example: http://www.foodpairing.ninja/milk/poi/ http://www.foodpairing.ninja/milk/poi/
- qrv3w 11y agoGood catch, I'll fix that.
- benten10 11y agoPretty cool! I'd also want to know what kinds of certain vegetables to get. For example, the difference between sweet tomatoes and sour tomatoes is the difference between a loved friend and a great cook, and an idiot who shouldn't have been let into the kitchen ; ). Same with the different kinds of onions, and so forth. While, as they are, the 'what to buy' list is moderately useful, it would be 100x more if we had greater details! Edit: Want to add something else. Haha, it shows ginger ale and red pepper as one of the worst combinations. It feels that someone should experiment, and make something good out of that. It doesn't feel too wrong (as wrong as, say, soft cheese and yogurt).
- qrv3w 11y agoThat's a great suggestion, to discern between types of vegetables. I'll think about that.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- butler14 11y agoThis is pretty fun to play around with. Especially the lowest rated pairings. Seaweed and unsalted butter is on the menu for this evening.
- cr1895 11y agoI really don't know if you're being flippant or not, but the seaweed butter crepes at Cafe Breizh in Paris are insanely good. They combine toasted nori with high-quality Breton salted butter. It's a delicious combination (but you need the salt!).
- overcast 11y agoButter makes everything awesome. It's the "secret" ingredient in every restaurant.
- kwhitefoot 11y agoButter is not a precise enough word in this context. Most US butter I have had was essentially just milk solids whereas most European butter is cultured butter and has a quite different flavour. I introduced one of my US colleagues to European butter and his instant reaction was that he now understood why people put it on bread.
- rubidium 11y agoWhy is almond different than almonds? More whitespace between navigation and ads please. Also, for my UI intuition, it would make sense to flip search box and "Show __ entries". Overall, fast and fun to see some ideas. I do like the "what to buy" list, as it shows what a well stocked kitchen should have on hand.
- qrv3w 11y agoGreat ideas! Thanks, I'll work on that and fix the plural detection.
- elcapitan 11y agoI like this, but: The recipes are from food.com (linking there once you have chosen your two ingredients). What's the difference from simply entering your two ingredients into the search box of food.com? (I tried it and got relatively similar results).
- brudgers 11y agoGoogling "ingredients X Y" will also produce recipes. That said, there's some food related statistical analysis here that may be different from what Google does {i.e. Google's analysis might be generic -- but they have been returning recipes for a long time}. Google tends to return results from allrecipes.com, and I've had good experience with it.
- fogleman 11y agoWell, you can look at the top pairings without entering your own.
- qrv3w 11y agoYou're right, most of the recipes are from food.com (they have one of the biggest databases). There is also data from epicurious, nytimes cooking, allrecipes and a few others.
- vblord 11y agoInteresting. How did you get the recipes from food.com? Did you just scrape them or is there a data feed somewhere?
- benwills 11y agoThis is great. It's one of those totally obvious ideas that everyone else just missed. Stick with it and keep refining and improving. The line of thinking is fantastic.
- qrv3w 11y agoThanks!
- timsco 11y agoThis is a bit off topic, but have you ever seen this book? It's an amazing dictionary of food pairings: http://www.amazon.com/Flavor-Bible-Essential-Creativity-Imaginative/dp/0316118400/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1455632138&sr=1-1&keywords=flavor+bible http://www.amazon.com/Flavor-Bible-Essential-Creativity-Imag...
- qrv3w 11y agoCool! That's new to me.
- pjmorris 11y agoTerrific book, we use it often when trying to come up with new ways to use what we have. There's a lot of value added by the chef interviews and recipes, but the core of the book just cries out to be a database and an app; they basically have a schema for how ingredients pair and group.
- flashm 11y agoGreat idea. Iterate on it. I've always wanted to make something like this, for when you've got some stuff in the fridge but don't know what to make. Input: "Eggs, carrots, beef, whatever" Output: Some tasty looking recipes by rating.
- nibnib 11y agolike http://www.supercook.com/ http://www.supercook.com/ ?
- roddux 11y agoOr http://www.recipekey.com/ http://www.recipekey.com/, http://myfridgefood.com/ http://myfridgefood.com/, www.myrecipes.com/search/ingredient-chef ...
- psuter 11y agoThis gives you fun results: https://www.ibmchefwatson.com/tupler https://www.ibmchefwatson.com/tupler
- flashm 11y agoThat is quite cool. The others mentioned below are good as well, but all have a fairly clunky and web based interface. I suppose I'm looking for a 'Ok Google, what can I make with peas, a poussin, and half an empty can of Doctor Pepper?' Now that would be cool.
- zhte415 11y agoSplay and place the poussin in a little oil to braise (if garlic is available, slice thinly and insert between skin and meat), skin side down, just enough oil to cover the skin surface exposed to the heating side of the pot. Until skin turns slightly brownish. Turn. Season - salt & peppa, and if they have thyme Turn again, leave until skin is crispy. Warm plate. Turn again, add 'half empty can of Doctor Pepper' to deglaze pot, leading to the syrup to stick to the chicken underside. Plate. Peas served freshly boiled, assuming fresh and sweet peas. Plate.
- fuhrysteve 11y agoThis is really cool, thanks for sharing it! I've been looking for tools that do things like this, however most things I've found end up being thrown together crap whose only goal is to serve as click-bait. My suggestion is to spend some time thinking about the pitch - because right now it seems really complicated for how simple it is to use the tool. For instance, to me as a user, it isn't immediately clear to me what this tool is - are we pairing ingredients for a single recipe? Is it meal planning - multiple dishes that go together? Allow me to brainstorm some ideas. Take them or leave them as you may! make "Pick an ingredient to Start" smaller and somewhere where it's viewed more as an instruction than a title (maybe right above the table in bold & medium gray (#696969 or so) Make the title explicitly state the problem / solution (rather than instructions)... something like "Find the Best Recipe by Ingredient" - I'm sure you can wordsmith it better. Try to express it simply and clearly enough that you feel comfortable deleting the two paragraphs at the top starting with "Go ahead and search [...]" As it happens, I find the hacker news post more informative than the site itself about what this tool does. I would replace "food" with "ingredient" in the title of this post, though, since "food" is too vague and gets back to the whole "is this for meal planning?" question.
- qrv3w 11y agoThanks! You're right, I should refine the idea a little more. Initially the idea was based around a question: "what are the best pairs of ingredients?" since I couldn't find many resources to answer it. Now it has evolved a bit since then to be more of a site to find recipes based on ingredients. From the comments here it seems like that might be a good route to follow. Really appreciate your brainstorming ideas!
- VLM 11y agoIt was not quite what I expected, I fed it olive oil and potato to see what happens because there's a lot of things you can do with fried potato... instead I got all kinds of random stuff that do well with potatos as more or less a side dish. Needs "two main ingredients" not just two things happening to be on the list in a dish that tastes good. I greatly enjoyed the "Worst Pairings" and recommend people click that. Red pepper ginger ale, LOL.
- qrv3w 11y agoThanks, I think you're right. I can do some more filtering to only include main ingredients.
- greggman 11y agoSeems very western oriented? Tried various ingredients very common in other parts of the world but they aren't in the list. Heck even "shrimp" is not on the list. Maybe it should be "Find the best recipe from this short list of 2 foods ..."
- qrv3w 11y agoSorry, it looks like I did miss some foods - I'll look to fixing that soon.
- sithadmin 11y agoA few staple items I eat a lot that are missing: eggplant (aubergine), green onion, asparagus, brussels sprouts, mushrooms (more narrow categories, please), daikon
- realusername 11y agoSeems just very English oriented you mean ? Not even western. Just look at the best pairing list, even if it goes well together, it's clearly not what I would put in the list myself.
- kwhitefoot 11y agoNot English, American.
- parsethis 11y agoLove the idea. I instantly tried almonds and apple juice and was surprised that they are recipes (and the amount of such) for this pairing! However, my exploration stopped there. Work on finding was to make it easier to explore, I'd rather not paginate.
- qrv3w 11y agoThanks, that's a great suggestion.
- wheeliez 11y agoLove it! It's fast and snappy. What tech did you use to build this? Is it open source? Are you planning to release an API? :)
- qrv3w 11y agoThanks! I used Python to pull everything together. The site itself is statically generated (hence the speed) using homemade templating, and the pages are hosted on Github (the repo for the site is here: https://github.com/schollz/flavor-combos https://github.com/schollz/flavor-combos. I don't suggest cloning this as its over 1GB). The code I used for generating the site is not open-source, yet... I can put it out there if folks are interested. An API is something I am planning on doing!
- S4M 11y agoIt's neat, but the search itself is tedious, as I have to type the first ingredient, click on it, then type the second ingredient and click on it. Wouldn't it be better (faster at least) to type the two ingredients separated by a space?
- qrv3w 11y agoGood idea! I can add that.
- kylemathews 11y agoPerhaps use a multi-select autocomplete widget. That'd make it simple to let people filter by more than two ingredients.
- tmaly 11y agovery cool, thanks for making this.
- benmw333 11y agoI think I'm going to like using this more than google/allrecipes/etc... its clean and uncluttered. Dig it. Thanks
- burmask 11y agoCheckout foodcombo.com and foodpairing.com.
- Al-Khwarizmi 11y agoGreat links, especially the first one as it requires no registration and Just Works(tm). Thanks!
- Al-Khwarizmi 11y agoVery nice, but I guess it will support more than two ingredients in the future, right? Two is a bit limited.
- mark_l_watson 11y agoI do something similar on cookingspace.com - I use 100K public domain recipes to correlate food ingredients that frequently appear together in recipes. I also use the USDA nutrition database. My site is just a hobby site. Congrats to foodpairing ninja - hacking on food stuff is fun!
- qrv3w 11y agoThanks, that's a neat site too!
- MillerMichael 11y agoReally cool! I've been waiting for such a website.
- svendlarssen 11y agoOn behalf of my GF i have to thank you! Cheers.
- CuriouslyC 11y agoI'm interested in doing some food centric data science, mind sharing the source for those public domain recipes?
- mark_l_watson 11y agoI am traveling but when I get home I will look into packaging the reusable parts.
- bduerst 11y agoIs the search down? http://cookingspace.com/?query=strawberry http://cookingspace.com/?query=strawberry
- mark_l_watson 11y agoI run this on a free Heroku plan, so it probably timed out for the day. This site is just a hobby for me but I should upgrade it to a paid for always on plan.
- btbuildem 11y agoGet that purple bunny off the page and you've got something there.
- qrv3w 11y agoYou don't like Chef Hops? ;)
- Something1234 11y agoI can't find him is he gone.
- kbrower 11y agoCool! I did something similar awhile back http://www.ingredientpairings.com/ http://www.ingredientpairings.com/ http://www.cookthing.com/ http://www.cookthing.com/
- papa_bear 11y agoDo you still make updates for recipe labs? I remember being pretty blown away by how much stuff you managed to cram in there, and it was a big inspiration for me when I started building EatThisMuch. We're still dragging our feet on creating a bunch of features that you've had for years :)
- qrv3w 11y agoAwesome website! Thanks for sharing.
- ethanpil 11y agoVery cool. Some ideas I would love to see: 1) Exclude recipe that include particular ingredient(s). (dietary restrictions) 2) Tooltips in the column headings that explain the various ratings and indexes you are using
- qrv3w 11y agoThose are great ideas! Thanks.
- justifier 11y agogreat site, allow me to +1 the parent's suggestions and i'll add one my self, perhaps cross reference these ingredients with nutrition data so i can do something like: i need to eat more iron and calcium
- qrv3w 11y agoYes! I like that idea, and I have nutrition information...just not integrated into the site yet.
- ergothus 11y ago#1 would be huge for me. I'm vegetarian, and hate green peppers, which means some 80% (made up stat) of all vegetarian recipes are no go for me. My wife, in turn, is vegetarian and a very picky eater (she has "texture" issues with food). These sorts of features would be very useful for me to cook for her. General appeal to the universe: If feeding a group, particularly vegetarians, DON'T go for a "use everything" strategy. That's like ordering Supreme pizzas for a group - if everyone dislikes one ingredient (but different for each), all you've done is made everyone unhappy.
- sithadmin 11y ago> If feeding a group, particularly vegetarians, DON'T go for a "use everything" strategy. Mind fleshing out that idea a bit more? I don't entirely understand what you're getting at, given that most people don't try to include as many ingredients in a dish as possible just for the sake thereof.
- janci 11y agoAre those 600,000 recipes downloaded and paired in my browser? Or can anyone explain, why it freezes the browser and cooks (pun intended) the CPU?
- stenius 11y agopretty cool but I noticed that it is getting bananas and banana peppers mixed up. http://www.foodpairing.ninja/banana/ground-beef/ http://www.foodpairing.ninja/banana/ground-beef/
- qrv3w 11y agoThanks for spotting that! I'll fix it.
- wakkadakka 11y agoA bug - when I search for eggs, it gives me eggplant recipes.
- tpowell 11y agoHa, my first search was for eggplant (new-ish vegetarian) and I got nothing. Amazing potential for a site like this, though. Should partner with Forks over Knives folks to get the word out.
- zodPod 11y agoI just ordered 4lbs of coconut flour from amazon. I have a goal for it but it won't take 4lbs... I was hoping for that to be in this database... Nope..
- mhb 11y agoNext?: Netlfix style recommendations for new recipes given a set of other recipes I've liked?
- samstave 11y agoWow this is cool. An idea: From mobile, allow me to scan a barcode of an ingredient while at the grocery store and find a recipe so o can get all the proper ingredients. Also start asking the price of anything scanned to start collecting costing data for each item and ultimately recipe and portion. For example: "my budget is $25 for two and we want to eat a fish dish"
- acidity 11y agoThis is so cool. I am actually planning to start working on something similar but for wet shaving market. Basically, I was trying to setup something where user can choose their after shave pairing based on scent details. Do you have plans to open source your algorithm?
- samstave 11y agoAlso, for humor make sure you've read this: http://the-toast.net/2014/09/04/eighteen-kinds-people-comment-recipe-blog/ http://the-toast.net/2014/09/04/eighteen-kinds-people-commen...
- 2pointsomone 11y agoSeriously - ads already? Use "Show HN" to show something you made something that people can love. Commercialization can follow later.
- voltagex_ 11y agoNope. Sites cost money to run especially if it gets a lot of traffic from HN and other sites. If my budget is $0, then running ads can help me pay the $5 Digital Ocean bill for the month, the $20 CloudFlare bill, domain renewal etc etc. I'd wager a large number of visitors from here are running ad blocking though.
- arbuge 11y agoThis is very cool. But the number of ingredients needs to be increased (only 240 right now). Mentioned this to my wife, and she chose lotus root, which isn't in there. 600k recipes is very impressive obviously.
- gearoidoc 11y agoWhats with the purple rabbit? Or am I seeing things?
- ipsin 11y agoIt would be good to have aliases for some foods. I was trying it on my own cooking, which involved "bok choi" and "onion". I didn't find "bok choi", but I did find "chinese cabbage", which is apparently the same thing?
- vilhelm_s 11y agoMy impression is that "chinese cabbage" more often refers to napa cabbage, which is different.
- sabya 11y agoWanted to try this out. Had avocado at home. Paired with Almond. Picked the top recipe. Loved it!
- ank_the_elder 11y agoIs it possible to restrict the number of ingredients to a given maximum? This would be very useful if you choose two very general ingredients - like I just did with 'chicken meat' and 'tomato'
- kwhitefoot 11y agoNeeds to include synonyms for ingredients: no eggplant/aubergine. Has some glaring omissions: doesn't find capsicum but does have red pepper. Needs definitions of the ingredients. A cucumber where I am (Norway) means what is known in the US (at least in NC) as an English cucumber. But the site doesn't make the distinction. If I make a cheese and cucumber sandwich I would expect English cucumber to be used. Nonetheless, an interesting idea and a good start.