7 ms·

Wikimedia Cookbook

172 points by nerdkid93 7y ago

flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago
I don't see how this could ever truly compete with traditional cookbooks. I don't want to eat the exact same macaroni and cheese dish served on one side of the country that I can on the other. I think what I am trying to say is that cooking can never be standardized, nor should it. You cannot standardize the world's recipes into a monolithic volume like Wikimedia has done with facts. I mean you could, but the 7,000 variations on every chef's take on a Reuben sandwich would be a chore to sift through. Facts rarely change, tastes often do.
- correct_horse 7y ago
  I generally agree that this will never be as popular as Wikipedia. But when cooking, I rarely follow the recipe exactly. The existence of a standardized recipe does not imply a standardized dish.
- kemiller2002 7y ago
  I agree. Recipes and food are about culture which obviously varies. What it would be good for is seeing a general look at what a recipe is. How do I make this sauce? What are the basic ingredients for chocolate cake? It probably won't ever capture the rich detail of using one technique/ingredient from a particular part of the world, but it's a starting point which someone can then look further into.
  - flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago
    Exactly my line of thought. This wiki cookbook will do swimmingly with answering questions like "What is a roux?" or "How to deglaze a pan?" but it's going to have a hell of a time being used like a traditional cookbook filled with recipes as we all know and love them today.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- kick 7y ago
  I don't see how this could ever truly compete with traditional cookbooks. It can easily have the same recipes, and it doesn't need to compete, in the same way Wikipedia doesn't with traditional encyclopedias: when you take away commercial incentive, something can just exist. I don't want to eat the exact same macaroni and cheese dish served on one side of the country that I can on the other. Great! Looks like there are a few dozen options, and there are alternative recipes in some of these pages: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=macaroni&prefix=Cookbook%3A&fulltext=Search+Cookbook https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=macaroni... I think what I am trying to say is that cooking can never be standardized, nor should it. Wikis are descriptive, not prescriptive. This book seems to be so, as well, making no attempt at standardization. If you have thousands of Reuben recipes you want to input, why not? You cannot standardize the world's recipes into a monolithic volume like Wikimedia has done with facts. Wikipedia doesn't standardize anything. You totally can collect them; there are a bunch of cooking sites and applications on the internet, just as there are a bunch of sites that collect facts. I mean you could, but the 7,000 variations on every chef's take on a Reuben sandwich would be a chore to sift through. That's what curation is for, and there are plenty of people who search through Wikipedia, find interesting articles, and share them. Facts rarely change, tastes often do. This makes a wiki the best possible place for recipes, then. Not only is there no hard-limit on the amount of content (storage is very nearly free, especially given Wikimedia's fundraising numbers), there's also version control history, and HTML has subheadings for variations on the same recipe that might occur over time.
  - flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago
    Cookbooks as written by a single chef are generally suggestions and collections of similar tastes, not static lists of every single recipe under the sun. I regularly seek out cookbooks written by a handful of trusted chefs, and devour the information contained within them with great trust and pleasure. I don't just go to the library and take out all the cookbooks I can carry home. Partly because I don't have the time to read through and test every single recipe inside of them, make a decision about what's good for dinner, and then make that quickly for my family. Traditional cookbooks exist because most of us are not chefs and we don't know what goes good with what. If we did, we could easily make use of a cook's flavor bible which is essentially what this monolithic wiki-cookbook will become imho.
- mmahemoff 7y ago
  It does have facts too, as there are reference pages for ingredients and practices. As for recipes, I think a neutral recipe can be a good starting point for your learning journey. It would probably be better if they had more references to variations though, similar to Wikipedia's further reading.
  - flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago
    >a neutral recipe What's neutral, though? There's no accounting for taste.
- dx87 7y ago
  It could be a good starting point for someone new to cooking, but it's up to individuals to experiment on their own once they feel comfortable.
- criley2 7y ago
  I agree that attempting to have one canonical recipe for something like "Macaroni and Cheese" is futile and counter-productive, but I don't think this project has to end up like that. For example, if the Macaroni and Cheese Cookbook page turned into an index for dozens of M+C recipes, named for the cultural influence or ingredient influence, that could certainly be useful. With the current state of recipes on the internet (most are extremely low quality click-bait designed around ad word integration for profit, for example, searching "instant pot recipes" returns just loads and loads of terrible monetized results) a source like this doesn't have to try terribly hard to be a high quality resource Even so it feels like it would be more useful as an encyclopedia of flavor than it would be for help making dinner tonight. Learning about the evolution of a dish would be very interesting, but I wouldn't trust an anonymous wiki editor very much in terms of actual cooking I think the biggest problem to me is that recipes are very much driven by personality. People learn a few chefs/sources that have produced good results for them, and they stick to those sources. They go buy the cookbooks from those people and stay in a safe walled garden where they can trust each recipe I think another big problem is the low quality of the recipe source. Traditionally listing ingredients with some steps along the way is sufficient for the experienced cook, but good modern recipes (to me) do so much more than list ingredients and steps. I follow a chef J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and when he breaks down a recipe (for Serious Eats or his books like The Food Lab) he goes so much more into WHY each decision was made, which empowers you to not just understand the decision but also change it. For example: The All-American Beef Stew -(https://www.seriouseats.com/2016/01/food-lab-follow-the-rules-for-the-best-all-american-beef-stew.html https://www.seriouseats.com/2016/01/food-lab-follow-the-rule...) (and the short version https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/01/all-american-beef-stew-recipe.html https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/01/all-american-bee...) Every aspect of the dish is analyzed and discussed! Or Fuschia Dunlop's translation of Sichuan cooking for a western audience, (e.g. https://andrewzimmern.com/2013/03/28/fuchsia-dunlops-fish-fragrant-eggplant/ https://andrewzimmern.com/2013/03/28/fuchsia-dunlops-fish-fr...) she helps distill Chinese culture and the cooking of this region with a lot more than an ingredient list and a step. That information, delivered by a trusted expert, is vital to understanding and mastering a dish from a culture very different than my own. Why would I want some anonymously written/edited list of ingredients and steps when I can have a professionally produced, multi-media (huge useful step by step images AND video), "scientifically-inspired" discussion of the recipe and why it does what it does? That's the kicker for me, I'll always go back to Kenji or Alton or Fuschia or someone I trust because I know they have delivered good results and researched the recipe deeply enough to help me succeed not just at their version but at my own version too
- falcor84 7y ago
  Well, despite the huge amount of variations, Wikipedia had a useful category for cocktails, and I never heard anyone complain. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martini_(cocktail) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martini_(cocktail)
- mjparrott 7y ago
  You can standardize things, if you are respectful of the concept that foods take on geographical characteristics and definitions. For example, the recipe for paella in Valencia, Spain is very specific. However, most of the world says “I want to make it however I like, I will call it Paella Valenciana anyways”. It’s right to customize and make your own versions, but it’s wrong to not acknowledge the fact that true specific definitions do exist in certain cultures and geographies. Simple example, ever seen a Chicago style pizza? It would be impossible to create a standard “pizza” recipe that covers all pizzas ... but you can have a specific style with a name. Culturally, there are places in the world (for example France) that do treat food recipes this way. The US is too individualistic for this to be found “acceptable” culturally.
- derefr 7y ago
  > I think what I am trying to say is that cooking can never be standardized, nor should it. Not that this is what is being attempted here, but rather than one or more recipes that each represents a particular set of curated choices, you could instead create a "recipe as multidimensional model" that captures the entirety of the configuration-space for "the food that is called X", where you can both adjust inputs and see how output parameters (e.g. saltiness, acidity, viscosity) will change, or constrain output parameters to find optimal input parameters. In other words, something like https://hur.st/bloomfilter/ https://hur.st/bloomfilter/, but for tuning your chocolate-chip cookies.
- commoner 7y ago
  There are already social recipe sites, such as Allrecipes, where people share their own recipes and their own variations of well-known recipes. The Wikimedia Cookbook is just a freely licensed social recipe site. If you look up a particular recipe online, you end up finding those 7,000 variations scattered across numerous blogs and websites. I don't see any requirement on the number of variations of a recipe that can be added to the Wikimedia Cookbook, and it's no worse to have some of them hosted here.
  - nonbirithm 7y ago
    Add to that the complete lack of prolix life stories for SEO and manual page scanning needed to get to the actual important part - how to cook the dish. Also MediaWiki's format is fairly minimal in comparison to AllRecipes which has gained an ugly oversized SPO feeling and tries to sell you the ingredients. If this wiki gains enough popular use such that it appears high up in the search results for recipes like Wikipedia already does for general knowledge it would be extremely convenient.
- conception 7y ago
  Would be interesting to see something ala https://www.completefoods.co/diy/recipes https://www.completefoods.co/diy/recipes in regards to the variations on recipes on standard recipe “tropes” like Mac and cheese. Not sure the mediawiki format is great for this however.
mmahemoff 7y ago
I thought it was programming "recipes" for working with Wikimedia at first. The FAQ should probably mention the year it began, which is 2004 going by homepage history.
app4soft 7y ago
The only thing missed in Wikibooks — export to PDF is disabled now.[0] [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/comments/8yta9l/how_get_pdf_export_convert_from_wikibook_now/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/comments/8yta9l/how_get_p...
nickthemagicman 7y ago
I need a decent json schema for a recipe. There are some out there but they have problems. Can we all agree on a recipe json schema so we can put our recipes in json and share them and make apps on top of them? I'm talking a schema that has quantity that can be plugged into IoT devices.
bradford 7y ago
The programmer/engineer in me has been deeply unhappy with recipes (both online and in print). The recipes in this online book are no exception. Chief complaint: the ambiguity of description means that ten different chefs could follow the recipe and have ten different results. To explain: consider the simple act of "browning an onion". Variables that might affect the outcome include the fine-ness of the dicing, the heat of the skillet (is my medium heat the same as yours?) and the extent of caramelization. The range of outcomes here can be anywhere from a crunchy, almost raw onion, to a nearly disintegrated brown paste. Take this and multiply with all the other steps involved in a typical recipe and try to tell me that the end result is predictable. Has anyone found any technique/recipe books that attempt to deal with this ambiguity? The only place I ever see clear instruction on such topics are cooking classes, but that's not convenient and it makes me wonder what the point of recipe books are at all.
- mjparrott 7y ago
  Very well articulated! I’ve thought about this before too. There is an assumption of having a “baseline knowledge and skill set” to be able to use most recipes. If you’re really starting from scratch (like I was a few years ago), the best thing you can do is to start trying and failing. I take meticulous notes on the things I cook to help me learn and improve. Take your example of heat on a pan. I’ve always wanted a stove where I can control the BTUs with a dial. You could test your own stove for it and calibrate yourself for example. There is a slightly more scientific blog here, but it won’t satisfy what you’re looking for I don’t think. I’ve never found that depth, but would appreciate it too! https://www.seriouseats.com/ https://www.seriouseats.com/ I like this book too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Food_Lab https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Food_Lab
  - bradford 7y ago
    Thanks, I'll check those out! I'd also like to mention cooks illustrated (they are online at https://www.cooksillustrated.com/ https://www.cooksillustrated.com/, but my primary experience is with the printed magazine form). I don't know if I'd call them 'scientific', but I like the detailed accounting of the authors expectations, along with failed attempts and adjustments. It's not completely what I'd like to see in a recipe book but I think it's the closest example that I can think of.
andrewzah 7y ago
This is an example of people trying to use technology to fix a social problem. I don't know who is editing or curating these recipes. Taste is subjective. At least with Wikipedia, I can point X sources and back my claims up. On here, I could just add random family ad-hoc recipes and no one can really debate them. Which leads to: Mac n' Cheese 1. Mac n' Cheese 2. Traditional cookbooks solve a problem: people may not know any recipes (or want to learn new ones) and want a curated collection from a chef that knows what they're talking about. Not random people online. Sure, books aren't guaranteed to be quality, but they're far less likely to be junk than random websites. They're even better if you only go by word of mouth- ask your parents/grandparents what they used! This wikicookbook idea doesn't solve any problems because it's no better than randomly searching "how to make tres leches cake" and picking some web page that had good enough SEO to get to the first page of duckduckgo. --- Things people actually want and/or need: * a website that matches (curated) recipes based on your ingredients. i.e. I can input "chicken bouillon, kale", and have it show me various recipes. * a standardized schema for recipes, i.e. in json. This way we can programmatically build apps, share recipes with friends, and maybe have browser/site integration. * a digital, open source collection of recipes only from chefs/etc with credentials. aka a curated collection. * a website that parses said recipes and can display multiple types of units depending on your preferences. * a website/app that lets you bookmark recipes and automatically parses them with said schema. and lets you categorize/tag recipes so you can filter by "favorites" or "want to try", etc. Bonus points if your app can interface with Apple's Homepod / Alexa, etc, so I can confirm a recipe while I'm cooking or washing dishes. This is the biggest let-down by far for the homepod.
- gabcoh 7y ago
  Regarding a standardized schema for recipes: https://schema.org/Recipe https://schema.org/Recipe I have no idea if this is in use anywhere or if any actual recipe service exposes this information, but there it is.
- kleer001 7y ago
  Heh, reminds me of this garbage: https://www.vintag.es/2018/11/honeywell-kitchen-computer.html https://www.vintag.es/2018/11/honeywell-kitchen-computer.htm... "It was advertised as a machine for storing recipes and helping housewives in their daily domestic tasks. However, reading and introducing a recipe was a difficult if not impossible task as the computer had no display and no keyboard. It required a two-week course in order to learn how to use the machine."
dhosek 7y ago
I misread the title as Mediawiki cookbook and was disappointed to learn that it wasn't filled with handy tips for customizing a mediawiki site.
axiomdata316 7y ago
I looked up wings and got Wings 3d user manual. Not quite as delicious.
codeontheedge 7y ago
I use Bing Recipes for all my recipe needs and I think it does a great job. It's a little rough around the edges, but you can tell its a dedicated investment on their side.
aaron695 7y ago
> https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Roasting https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Roasting > Roasted foods get drier and browned on the outside by initially exposing it to a high temperature. This keeps most of the moisture from being cooked out of the food. This is scientifically wrong I believe. This is a common problem with attempts at axioms of cooking online like cooking.stackexchange.com it just can't be crowd source using known methods. It's mostly incorrect information. Solve this and you will allow a lot of great wikis happen, but most topics are stuck here. Roughly Maths->Physics->Chemistry are ok, then it starts to fail Biology ->

172 points by nerdkid93 7y ago

I don't see how this could ever truly compete with traditional cookbooks. I don't want to eat the exact same macaroni and cheese dish served on one side of the country that I can on the other. I think what I am trying to say is that cooking can never be standardized, nor should it. You cannot standardize the world's recipes into a monolithic volume like Wikimedia has done with facts. I mean you could, but the 7,000 variations on every chef's take on a Reuben sandwich would be a chore to sift through. Facts rarely change, tastes often do.

correct_horse 7y ago
I generally agree that this will never be as popular as Wikipedia. But when cooking, I rarely follow the recipe exactly. The existence of a standardized recipe does not imply a standardized dish.
kemiller2002 7y ago
I agree. Recipes and food are about culture which obviously varies. What it would be good for is seeing a general look at what a recipe is. How do I make this sauce? What are the basic ingredients for chocolate cake? It probably won't ever capture the rich detail of using one technique/ingredient from a particular part of the world, but it's a starting point which someone can then look further into.
- flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago
  Exactly my line of thought. This wiki cookbook will do swimmingly with answering questions like "What is a roux?" or "How to deglaze a pan?" but it's going to have a hell of a time being used like a traditional cookbook filled with recipes as we all know and love them today.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
kick 7y ago
I don't see how this could ever truly compete with traditional cookbooks. It can easily have the same recipes, and it doesn't need to compete, in the same way Wikipedia doesn't with traditional encyclopedias: when you take away commercial incentive, something can just exist. I don't want to eat the exact same macaroni and cheese dish served on one side of the country that I can on the other. Great! Looks like there are a few dozen options, and there are alternative recipes in some of these pages: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=macaroni&prefix=Cookbook%3A&fulltext=Search+Cookbook https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=macaroni... I think what I am trying to say is that cooking can never be standardized, nor should it. Wikis are descriptive, not prescriptive. This book seems to be so, as well, making no attempt at standardization. If you have thousands of Reuben recipes you want to input, why not? You cannot standardize the world's recipes into a monolithic volume like Wikimedia has done with facts. Wikipedia doesn't standardize anything. You totally can collect them; there are a bunch of cooking sites and applications on the internet, just as there are a bunch of sites that collect facts. I mean you could, but the 7,000 variations on every chef's take on a Reuben sandwich would be a chore to sift through. That's what curation is for, and there are plenty of people who search through Wikipedia, find interesting articles, and share them. Facts rarely change, tastes often do. This makes a wiki the best possible place for recipes, then. Not only is there no hard-limit on the amount of content (storage is very nearly free, especially given Wikimedia's fundraising numbers), there's also version control history, and HTML has subheadings for variations on the same recipe that might occur over time.
- flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago
  Cookbooks as written by a single chef are generally suggestions and collections of similar tastes, not static lists of every single recipe under the sun. I regularly seek out cookbooks written by a handful of trusted chefs, and devour the information contained within them with great trust and pleasure. I don't just go to the library and take out all the cookbooks I can carry home. Partly because I don't have the time to read through and test every single recipe inside of them, make a decision about what's good for dinner, and then make that quickly for my family. Traditional cookbooks exist because most of us are not chefs and we don't know what goes good with what. If we did, we could easily make use of a cook's flavor bible which is essentially what this monolithic wiki-cookbook will become imho.
mmahemoff 7y ago
It does have facts too, as there are reference pages for ingredients and practices. As for recipes, I think a neutral recipe can be a good starting point for your learning journey. It would probably be better if they had more references to variations though, similar to Wikipedia's further reading.
- flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago
  >a neutral recipe What's neutral, though? There's no accounting for taste.
dx87 7y ago
It could be a good starting point for someone new to cooking, but it's up to individuals to experiment on their own once they feel comfortable.
criley2 7y ago
I agree that attempting to have one canonical recipe for something like "Macaroni and Cheese" is futile and counter-productive, but I don't think this project has to end up like that. For example, if the Macaroni and Cheese Cookbook page turned into an index for dozens of M+C recipes, named for the cultural influence or ingredient influence, that could certainly be useful. With the current state of recipes on the internet (most are extremely low quality click-bait designed around ad word integration for profit, for example, searching "instant pot recipes" returns just loads and loads of terrible monetized results) a source like this doesn't have to try terribly hard to be a high quality resource Even so it feels like it would be more useful as an encyclopedia of flavor than it would be for help making dinner tonight. Learning about the evolution of a dish would be very interesting, but I wouldn't trust an anonymous wiki editor very much in terms of actual cooking I think the biggest problem to me is that recipes are very much driven by personality. People learn a few chefs/sources that have produced good results for them, and they stick to those sources. They go buy the cookbooks from those people and stay in a safe walled garden where they can trust each recipe I think another big problem is the low quality of the recipe source. Traditionally listing ingredients with some steps along the way is sufficient for the experienced cook, but good modern recipes (to me) do so much more than list ingredients and steps. I follow a chef J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and when he breaks down a recipe (for Serious Eats or his books like The Food Lab) he goes so much more into WHY each decision was made, which empowers you to not just understand the decision but also change it. For example: The All-American Beef Stew -(https://www.seriouseats.com/2016/01/food-lab-follow-the-rules-for-the-best-all-american-beef-stew.html https://www.seriouseats.com/2016/01/food-lab-follow-the-rule...) (and the short version https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/01/all-american-beef-stew-recipe.html https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/01/all-american-bee...) Every aspect of the dish is analyzed and discussed! Or Fuschia Dunlop's translation of Sichuan cooking for a western audience, (e.g. https://andrewzimmern.com/2013/03/28/fuchsia-dunlops-fish-fragrant-eggplant/ https://andrewzimmern.com/2013/03/28/fuchsia-dunlops-fish-fr...) she helps distill Chinese culture and the cooking of this region with a lot more than an ingredient list and a step. That information, delivered by a trusted expert, is vital to understanding and mastering a dish from a culture very different than my own. Why would I want some anonymously written/edited list of ingredients and steps when I can have a professionally produced, multi-media (huge useful step by step images AND video), "scientifically-inspired" discussion of the recipe and why it does what it does? That's the kicker for me, I'll always go back to Kenji or Alton or Fuschia or someone I trust because I know they have delivered good results and researched the recipe deeply enough to help me succeed not just at their version but at my own version too
falcor84 7y ago
Well, despite the huge amount of variations, Wikipedia had a useful category for cocktails, and I never heard anyone complain. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martini_(cocktail) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martini_(cocktail)
mjparrott 7y ago
You can standardize things, if you are respectful of the concept that foods take on geographical characteristics and definitions. For example, the recipe for paella in Valencia, Spain is very specific. However, most of the world says “I want to make it however I like, I will call it Paella Valenciana anyways”. It’s right to customize and make your own versions, but it’s wrong to not acknowledge the fact that true specific definitions do exist in certain cultures and geographies. Simple example, ever seen a Chicago style pizza? It would be impossible to create a standard “pizza” recipe that covers all pizzas ... but you can have a specific style with a name. Culturally, there are places in the world (for example France) that do treat food recipes this way. The US is too individualistic for this to be found “acceptable” culturally.
derefr 7y ago
> I think what I am trying to say is that cooking can never be standardized, nor should it. Not that this is what is being attempted here, but rather than one or more recipes that each represents a particular set of curated choices, you could instead create a "recipe as multidimensional model" that captures the entirety of the configuration-space for "the food that is called X", where you can both adjust inputs and see how output parameters (e.g. saltiness, acidity, viscosity) will change, or constrain output parameters to find optimal input parameters. In other words, something like https://hur.st/bloomfilter/ https://hur.st/bloomfilter/, but for tuning your chocolate-chip cookies.
commoner 7y ago
There are already social recipe sites, such as Allrecipes, where people share their own recipes and their own variations of well-known recipes. The Wikimedia Cookbook is just a freely licensed social recipe site. If you look up a particular recipe online, you end up finding those 7,000 variations scattered across numerous blogs and websites. I don't see any requirement on the number of variations of a recipe that can be added to the Wikimedia Cookbook, and it's no worse to have some of them hosted here.
- nonbirithm 7y ago
  Add to that the complete lack of prolix life stories for SEO and manual page scanning needed to get to the actual important part - how to cook the dish. Also MediaWiki's format is fairly minimal in comparison to AllRecipes which has gained an ugly oversized SPO feeling and tries to sell you the ingredients. If this wiki gains enough popular use such that it appears high up in the search results for recipes like Wikipedia already does for general knowledge it would be extremely convenient.
conception 7y ago
Would be interesting to see something ala https://www.completefoods.co/diy/recipes https://www.completefoods.co/diy/recipes in regards to the variations on recipes on standard recipe “tropes” like Mac and cheese. Not sure the mediawiki format is great for this however.

mmahemoff 7y ago

I thought it was programming "recipes" for working with Wikimedia at first. The FAQ should probably mention the year it began, which is 2004 going by homepage history.

app4soft 7y ago

The only thing missed in Wikibooks — export to PDF is disabled now.[0] [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/comments/8yta9l/how_get_pdf_export_convert_from_wikibook_now/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/comments/8yta9l/how_get_p...

nickthemagicman 7y ago

I need a decent json schema for a recipe. There are some out there but they have problems. Can we all agree on a recipe json schema so we can put our recipes in json and share them and make apps on top of them? I'm talking a schema that has quantity that can be plugged into IoT devices.

bradford 7y ago

The programmer/engineer in me has been deeply unhappy with recipes (both online and in print). The recipes in this online book are no exception. Chief complaint: the ambiguity of description means that ten different chefs could follow the recipe and have ten different results. To explain: consider the simple act of "browning an onion". Variables that might affect the outcome include the fine-ness of the dicing, the heat of the skillet (is my medium heat the same as yours?) and the extent of caramelization. The range of outcomes here can be anywhere from a crunchy, almost raw onion, to a nearly disintegrated brown paste. Take this and multiply with all the other steps involved in a typical recipe and try to tell me that the end result is predictable. Has anyone found any technique/recipe books that attempt to deal with this ambiguity? The only place I ever see clear instruction on such topics are cooking classes, but that's not convenient and it makes me wonder what the point of recipe books are at all.

mjparrott 7y ago
Very well articulated! I’ve thought about this before too. There is an assumption of having a “baseline knowledge and skill set” to be able to use most recipes. If you’re really starting from scratch (like I was a few years ago), the best thing you can do is to start trying and failing. I take meticulous notes on the things I cook to help me learn and improve. Take your example of heat on a pan. I’ve always wanted a stove where I can control the BTUs with a dial. You could test your own stove for it and calibrate yourself for example. There is a slightly more scientific blog here, but it won’t satisfy what you’re looking for I don’t think. I’ve never found that depth, but would appreciate it too! https://www.seriouseats.com/ https://www.seriouseats.com/ I like this book too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Food_Lab https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Food_Lab
- bradford 7y ago
  Thanks, I'll check those out! I'd also like to mention cooks illustrated (they are online at https://www.cooksillustrated.com/ https://www.cooksillustrated.com/, but my primary experience is with the printed magazine form). I don't know if I'd call them 'scientific', but I like the detailed accounting of the authors expectations, along with failed attempts and adjustments. It's not completely what I'd like to see in a recipe book but I think it's the closest example that I can think of.

andrewzah 7y ago

This is an example of people trying to use technology to fix a social problem. I don't know who is editing or curating these recipes. Taste is subjective. At least with Wikipedia, I can point X sources and back my claims up. On here, I could just add random family ad-hoc recipes and no one can really debate them. Which leads to: Mac n' Cheese 1. Mac n' Cheese 2. Traditional cookbooks solve a problem: people may not know any recipes (or want to learn new ones) and want a curated collection from a chef that knows what they're talking about. Not random people online. Sure, books aren't guaranteed to be quality, but they're far less likely to be junk than random websites. They're even better if you only go by word of mouth- ask your parents/grandparents what they used! This wikicookbook idea doesn't solve any problems because it's no better than randomly searching "how to make tres leches cake" and picking some web page that had good enough SEO to get to the first page of duckduckgo. --- Things people actually want and/or need: * a website that matches (curated) recipes based on your ingredients. i.e. I can input "chicken bouillon, kale", and have it show me various recipes. * a standardized schema for recipes, i.e. in json. This way we can programmatically build apps, share recipes with friends, and maybe have browser/site integration. * a digital, open source collection of recipes only from chefs/etc with credentials. aka a curated collection. * a website that parses said recipes and can display multiple types of units depending on your preferences. * a website/app that lets you bookmark recipes and automatically parses them with said schema. and lets you categorize/tag recipes so you can filter by "favorites" or "want to try", etc. Bonus points if your app can interface with Apple's Homepod / Alexa, etc, so I can confirm a recipe while I'm cooking or washing dishes. This is the biggest let-down by far for the homepod.

gabcoh 7y ago
Regarding a standardized schema for recipes: https://schema.org/Recipe https://schema.org/Recipe I have no idea if this is in use anywhere or if any actual recipe service exposes this information, but there it is.
kleer001 7y ago
Heh, reminds me of this garbage: https://www.vintag.es/2018/11/honeywell-kitchen-computer.html https://www.vintag.es/2018/11/honeywell-kitchen-computer.htm... "It was advertised as a machine for storing recipes and helping housewives in their daily domestic tasks. However, reading and introducing a recipe was a difficult if not impossible task as the computer had no display and no keyboard. It required a two-week course in order to learn how to use the machine."

dhosek 7y ago

I misread the title as Mediawiki cookbook and was disappointed to learn that it wasn't filled with handy tips for customizing a mediawiki site.

axiomdata316 7y ago

I looked up wings and got Wings 3d user manual. Not quite as delicious.

codeontheedge 7y ago

I use Bing Recipes for all my recipe needs and I think it does a great job. It's a little rough around the edges, but you can tell its a dedicated investment on their side.

aaron695 7y ago

> https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Roasting https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Roasting > Roasted foods get drier and browned on the outside by initially exposing it to a high temperature. This keeps most of the moisture from being cooked out of the food. This is scientifically wrong I believe. This is a common problem with attempts at axioms of cooking online like cooking.stackexchange.com it just can't be crowd source using known methods. It's mostly incorrect information. Solve this and you will allow a lot of great wikis happen, but most topics are stuck here. Roughly Maths->Physics->Chemistry are ok, then it starts to fail Biology ->