31 ms·

Show HN: CookLang – Recipe Markup Language

415 points by dubadub 5y ago

xutopia 5y ago
The only thing missing would be a substitute... for example "vinegar or lemon juice" is impossible to describe in the current language spec.
- gizdan 5y ago
  Lots missing really, you can add nutrition and scaling things to that list.
- dubadub 5y ago
  I'd suggest to open an issue for tracking in spec repo https://github.com/cooklang/spec https://github.com/cooklang/spec, so people can discuss different options.
- dubadub 5y ago
  Good point, any idea how it could look like?
  - vborovikov 5y ago
    How about [@raw organic cane sugar, @honey]{3%tbsp} Here square brackets indicate that the ingredient will have variations separated by commas.
    - dubadub 5y ago
      Interesting idea, how about the case when quantity varies for different ingredient? For example 2 tbsp of raw organic cane sugar or 3 honey.
    - quisnam 5y ago
      Good idea. I'd prefer the at sign in front of the brackets, though. @[sugar, honey]{3%tbsp} It should be easier to parse and allows for brackets to be used elsewhere without escapes.
- splatcollision 5y ago
  You could be inspired by the link reference syntax from markdown, and use the following where subs are possible: add @acid{1%tsp} to @milk{1%cup} to create acidulated milk [acid]{lemon juice|apple cider vinegar} Anyway great spec and language!
tomlong 5y ago
Yesterday a friend remarked to me she had lost a recipe for something or other and I resolved to start recording some I use, I was thinking of something like MD/Obsidian but this looks really good. Great to have the iOS app, an easily convertable human readable and writable format and hang on to your own data. Going to give this a good look over today. Might think about an Obsidian plugin as well.
Master_Odin 5y ago
One thing that doesn't look possible from the spec is supporting recipes with multiple discrete parts. An immediate example for me would be I made a fish dish that had an optional salsa to put on top. I substituted the salsa for something else, so given a recipe, it would be nice to see "here are ingredients for the fish, here are the ingredients for salsa", and that they don't go into a unified singular count of ingredients.
zmix 5y ago
The most thorough format I know of (and which is the one I use) is http://www.formatdata.com/recipeml/ http://www.formatdata.com/recipeml/ Though, this here is much easier to edit. May need to create a converter ;-)
garfieldnate 5y ago
This is nerdy and probably superfluous but I actually love it! The .cook extension is such a cute touch. I actually do already store all of my recipes in .txt files, so maybe I'll convert them to this and create some shortcut scripts for quickly search my recipes while I'm at it :)
miguelrochefort 5y ago
It would be great if CookLang was compatible with, and compilable to, Schema.org's Recipe schemas [0]. Here's an interesting discussion on the subject of ingredient quantities [1]. [0] https://schema.org/Recipe https://schema.org/Recipe [1] https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/issues/882 https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/issues/882
- dubadub 5y ago
  Good idea, thank you for sharing
- peter_retief 5y ago
  I have tried the schema recipe schema but it was too complex for me. CookLang looks promising in that it might be simpler. I cook and I write code but never at the same time :)
- mekkkkkk 5y ago
  Just out of curiosity, is there any interop that you'd personally benefit from? I'm unfamiliar with schema.org's more ephemeral schemas and how commonly they are used.
pintxo 5y ago
This looks really fantastic. Is anyone working on let's name it CookHub already? So essentially GitHub for receipts. The nerd in me wants to fork receipts and share my small adaptations to the community.
- dubadub 5y ago
  Yeah, the same here :-). We created a placeholder repo https://github.com/cooklang/recipes https://github.com/cooklang/recipes, but it still subject to workout structure and probably it makes sense to standardise units in some way.
- d--b 5y ago
  That would be pretty cool. It would already work in github, but yeah a dedicated site would probably be better ;-). I'm afraid that the intersection of people interesting in cooking and people who know how source control works is likely pretty niche The other problem I have with community cooking websites is that usually people always underestimate the cooking time and that's annoying as hell. Like people would say you need to cook onions for 10 minutes, while onions take close to 25 minutes to be cooked. On the French website marmiton, it was so ubiquitous that they have moderators come in and fix people's recipes. Edit: see https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/05/how-to-cook-onions-why-recipe-writers-lie-and-lie-about-how-long-they-take-to-caramelize.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/05/how-to-cook-onions-...
  - fiedzia 5y ago
    > people would say you need to cook onions for 10 minutes, while onions take close to 25 minutes to be cooked It's up to recipe author to define what they cook and how. If you think 25 min is better, fork it.
    - egeozcan 5y ago
      Or report the bug, which should probably have another name in this context.
  - pintxo 5y ago
pintxo 5y ago
Also, any plans on how to convert between units?
- dubadub 5y ago
  Not yet solid, but there are ideas. For example, define units config in a way like that: "1l | 1000 ml | ...". The first value will be a preferred one and everything else will be converted. What do you think?
  - pintxo 5y ago
    Might be the only viable way, as conversion factors are ingredient specific (e.g. Milk/Flour, Cups vs Liter/Grams)
    - rkangel 5y ago
      The language parser has the information to know what ingredient the unit is for though, so you could build a database of those conversions.
amir734jj 5y ago
What did you use for lexer and parser?? I couldn't find it on the GitHub front page/source code.
- dubadub 5y ago
  The parser is hand-made https://github.com/cooklang/CookInSwift https://github.com/cooklang/CookInSwift. I was reading a book "Crafting Interpreters" by Robert Nystrom (fantastic and atmospheric book!) and was eager to try it myself.
schleck8 5y ago
No support for Windows and Android?
- dubadub 5y ago
  This release is MVP, to test the waters. If people like the project we will definitely continue to expand to other platforms. I’m not 100% sure but it might work on windows in WSL already.
  - supercheetah 5y ago
    I'm betting you could probably get away with just using MSYS to compile it for Windows
    - supercheetah 5y ago
      Ah, nevermind. I just noticed you're using Swift.
      - dubadub 5y ago
        I haven't tried it yet, but there's Swift support for Windows https://swift.org/blog/swift-on-windows/ https://swift.org/blog/swift-on-windows/
- leetrout 5y ago
  Maybe due to the Swift toolchain and what is easiest to get working first? (I have never used Swift)
  - dubadub 5y ago
    You can try to run precompiled Linux binary, it’s statically linked so doesn’t have any dependencies (almost). Edit. Here is installation instructions https://github.com/cooklang/CookCLI#installation https://github.com/cooklang/CookCLI#installation
martinskou 5y ago
Looks nice. Now if we just had a good Markup Language for webdesign...
mysterydip 5y ago
What's the markup for "unrelated long-winded story because I wanted to be a writer"? :) Great idea, and I agree with another commenter that a github-style recipe sharing/forking system would be a good addition.
- rexpop 5y ago
  This is an unnecessarily harsh characterization. Recipe writers are constrained by economics, just like the rest of us. It's dismaying to see such cruel mockery on an industry forum. You may also want to look into Fundamental Attribution Error: recipe writers are "flawed", in your mind, but do you judge yourself so harshly? Likely, not. You probably excuse your own misbehavior as compelled by transient circumstance.
- BasilPH 5y ago
  I heard that the long-winded stories also serve to make the text longer for SEO purposes. i could imagine that it makes you stay longer on the page, because you look for the recipe. Also, more text equals more opportunities to insert ads.
- kevinmchugh 5y ago
  The intro serves a couple purposes. It ensured the text of the recipe was "below the jump" on RSS readers, so the audience had to go to the original sites (and see ads). It helps detect and trap plagiarists - it's copywritable, while a recipe isn't. But it also contextualizes the recipe. It's really important for me to understand if I'm seeing an easy weeknight favorite or a labor-of-love Sunday meal. Beyond just looking at the timing, I want to know how a cook thinks about the dish. If you open cookbooks, the intro spiel is common, and I often find it more helpful than the actual text of the recipe. There's a million places I can read a recipe for pad Thai, but Andy Ricker and Leela Punyaratabandhu have some deep insight that is very valuable. Certainly some authors are crappy writers and don't add value here - I don't follow those people. Googling for recipes will turn those people up too often.
dmitriid 5y ago
Every recipe (and recipe language) must include links to descriptions of ingredients and/or alternatives. I have no idea what a "medium victorian spring spruce potato is" or whatever it is you're using. In Sweden we have only two kinds: hard and soft. Same goes for basically everything else :)
- dubadub 5y ago
  That was the motivation. I had the same problem that recipes from the apps aren’t localised to local produce. Also sometimes I want to cut corners and do thing easier. I should be able to apply agile and maintain my recipes in my way :-)
- Moru 5y ago
  In north Sweden we have also only two kinds of potatoes. One is called Mandelpotatis, and then we have all the rest that noone buys. Seriously, if you don't like potatoes or think it's boring, try Mandelpotatis (if you can find it, it likes sandy, not very nutrious earth to grow or it will get sick and die :-) I have been thinking of a way of writing my recepies so I can process them into a database some day for easier search. I realised I would never have the energy to actually do it so I'm just switching to markdown and running a static webcompiler on them to output html with search function in javascript and upload to github. Works better than expected and have everything I need.
  - morberg 5y ago
    Sounds like you have a similar setup to mine [1]. I have added PDF as an output format using pandoc. Also GitHub actions to automatically generate a new version when I push a commit. Would you mind sharing yours? I am always looking for inspiration and ways to improve. [1]: https://github.com/morberg/recept https://github.com/morberg/recept
    - Moru 5y ago
      Mine is just a default setup of this: https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/ https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/ Document folder structure similar to yours. I'm going to look through your collection, looks interesting :-)
ajot 5y ago
This looks very good! I hope Kookbook [0] (which I use without too much hassle) implements it. [0] https://github.com/KDE/kookbook https://github.com/KDE/kookbook
- dubadub 5y ago
  Nice! I wasn’t aware of that project. It has very similar idea. In cookcli there's a small web server too. It’s not fancy or very developed, but allows to check the recipe or manage shopping list
jimmyed 5y ago
Holy cow, I seemed like a fun little project until I saw the android AND iOS apps! Some folks don't know when to stop, or maybe that's most of us ..
thih9 5y ago
> Set oven to max temperature This instruction in the Neapolitan Pizza recipe got me interested. Surely there is an upper limit? Turns out the Wikipedia article about oven temperatures [1] has a dedicated entry: > Neapolitan pizza: 905°F (485°C) Which is way more than I expected. I guess this justifies the “set oven to max“. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oven_temperatures https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oven_temperatures
- Kylekramer 5y ago
  People will hack their ovens to run cleaning cycles without locking for pizza making purpose.
  - stewx 5y ago
    Note: this will significantly reduce the life of your oven. The self-cleaning cycle is torture for the oven components. They are not really built to withstand the heat.
- fastball 5y ago
  Basically the reason there are pizza ovens is because they get way hotter than a normal oven.
- flyingfences 5y ago
  If you want to know all about pizza temperatures, check out a pro's breakdown. http://www.varasanos.com/pizzarecipe.htm http://www.varasanos.com/pizzarecipe.htm
  - dubadub 5y ago
    Wow, that's an amazing link for someone like me who loves cooking pizza!
schmorptron 5y ago
This looks awesome! I wonder how difficult it would be to integrate it with Gnome Recipes?[0] The interface is really nice and even automatically makes shopping lists for you based on recipes and intended servings you selected. [0]https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Recipes https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Recipes
- dubadub 5y ago
  Nice app! Perhaps the app authors can integrate CookLang parser to import recipe files in CookLang.
roetlich 5y ago
Looks super good! I love the planned feature for adjusting servings. Converting units would probably be another cool feature.
- dubadub 5y ago
  Certainly, adding units to roadmap soon as well.
- fartcannon 5y ago
  Yeah, mix and match types because some of use are in silly countries that use mixed units.
brigandish 5y ago
I like it, a lot. However, the syntax for linking steps to pictures should be rethought, IMO, what if an image already has numbers in its filename? Could get confusing very quickly. Still, I think I'll try this out!
- dubadub 5y ago
  Agree, this was a last-minute hack. If you have an idea how to rethink this you can share one in a spec repo issues if you don't mind https://github.com/cooklang/spec https://github.com/cooklang/spec. Thanks!
hardmath123 5y ago
You might also like this little book, "Computational Cooking," which is also, in a way, a meditation on the language of recipes. http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/CompCook.html http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/CompCook.html
- dubadub 5y ago
  Great book, thanks for sharing!
dusted 5y ago
I suggest replacing % with a space between the amount and unit. @potatoes {1 kg} is a bit easier on the eyes
- mekkkkkk 5y ago
  Having an explicit delimiter allows for whitespace in either amount or unit. I suppose that's the reason. Can't seem to come up with an example for that on the fly though.
- dubadub 5y ago
  I agree, I thought about that. I expect that it can be some cases when either ingredients or units have spaces. And the problem is that I can't come up with a solid counter example. Something like @coriander{2%small batches}... You can open an issue in a spec repo so people can discuss https://github.com/cooklang/spec https://github.com/cooklang/spec.
  - gizdan 5y ago
    Maybe using an underscore might make sense? i.e. {2_small batches}?
bwindsor 5y ago
I've been working on a stove safety/smart cooking device which is based on the temperature of your pan [0]. There are a small number of recipes which it currently works with [1]. To do this we defined a JSON format for recipes [2] but if we could use something similar to the text format used by CookLang that would be amazing, as it's much easier to write than JSON and could also be automatically rendered into a web page. Currently we are writing it twice - once in JSON for the cooking app, and once in human readable form. [0] https://mypippa.me/ https://mypippa.me/ [1] https://recipes.mypippa.me/ https://recipes.mypippa.me/ [2] https://recipes.mypippa.me/schemas/cookMLSchema3.0.json https://recipes.mypippa.me/schemas/cookMLSchema3.0.json
- CraigJPerry 5y ago
  Ha! This is one of the best ideas I’ve seen on HN. Just the safety thing alone has me hooked.
- smashed 5y ago
  The newsletter pop-up made your site unusable on mobile. Hard to close, and then it kept coming back. Obnoxious and rage inducing. I hate your product now.
  - bwindsor 5y ago
    I'd be interested if there's research showing whether a one-off popup gives more signups or more annoyance. The marketing people seem to think it's better to have it there. I agree it's hard to close, I'll see if I can do something about that. It shouldn't keep coming back once closed, which browser are you using? Although it does come back if you refresh the page. I might be able to do something about that as well.
    - culpable_pickle 5y ago
      Personally, those popups are an immediate close tab for me. If you have no confidence in my wanting to sign up for your news letter after I've seen your content, I don't want to bother with your content at all.
weakty 5y ago
This is interesting. A year or two ago I tried creating my own web application [1] for cataloguing recipes. It involved creating a parser in Elm [2] that could handle JSON generated by org mode files (where I stored the recipes). It was far too convoluted - but it gave me some of the features that I wanted - simple pages with recipes, with hover-to-see-quantities, as well as a cooking timer. If I was to do it again, I might investigate using something like cooklang to see if I can get the same functionality out of it. [1] https://arisgarden.theiceshelf.com/recipe/sweet-potato-gnocci https://arisgarden.theiceshelf.com/recipe/sweet-potato-gnocc... [2]https://github.com/theiceshelf/arisgarden/blob/master/src/Pages/RecipeSingle.elm#L193-L219 https://github.com/theiceshelf/arisgarden/blob/master/src/Pa...
schleck8 5y ago
The website isn't linked on the Github repo yet
- dubadub 5y ago
  Thanks, will add the link
Riverheart 5y ago
This just a hobby project or will this evolve into a commercial offering?
- dubadub 5y ago
  It started as a hobby project to solve my personal needs: I really hate grocery shopping: it's repetitive and takes time. I decided to automate it, but couldn't find any robust tools for that. Also for a long time wanted to create a parser and this was a good opportunity. Current plan is to offer iOS and Android apps for a one-time fee. These apps are based on open-source language and parser (the same used by CLI), but a bit nicer and user friendlier.
ltr_ 5y ago
interesting language, didn't have the time to read the details/spec but, what i found most difficult when reading recipes on the internet that the ingredient names change dramatically between countries(event with the same spoken language), does this language attempt tackle that problem? also it would be nice to have alternatives for some ingredients.
- dubadub 5y ago
  Agreed, recipes often need localisation. The language itself agnostic to ingredients and doesn't provide any database. It's up to a user to tag ingredients so tools can recognise them and use in different ways. It's very easy to update a recipe file in a text format, so there shouldn't be an issue to quickly change names in a recipe you get from your friend overseas.
SergeAx 5y ago
Another TWO recipe markup standards: http://microformats.org/wiki/hrecipe http://microformats.org/wiki/hrecipe https://schema.org/Recipe https://schema.org/Recipe Mandatory xkcd link: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
- wds 5y ago
  hRecipe looks like it's just HTML/entirely web-based, and Schema seems like it covers way more than it reasonably should. I personally think CookLang is the better of these, even this early on.
  - madrox 5y ago
    hRecipe is over 10 years old, and the point of microformats is to extract semantic data from HTML. It's not really solving the same problem as CookLang in the way HTML and JSON aren't solving the same thing. While I don't know much about the history of Recipe in Schema, I find "covers way more than it reasonably should" to be an odd criticism of a format. I usually find it to be a mark of schema maturity. All concepts behind data formats have more complexity than an initial investigation would uncover (see also: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names[1]). If anything, it leads me to believe CookLang has a ways to go. 1: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
tristor 5y ago
What is wrong with microformats2? I've been using hRecipe on my personal website for awhile.
majkinetor 5y ago
OMG nice. Small DSLs like this are wonderful. A question. How do I connect images to recipes. I usually have multiple for single recipe. It would be nice to have some keyword for that and/or configured location... On iOS app there is a picture for example, how is it represented in the .cook file ? I see Adding Pictures section but it says it should live in the same directory ? Any option to specify that differently as in your seed all files will be in the single folder and there will be mess on file system. I would for instance prefer to have a folder per recipe with cook file and images.
- dubadub 5y ago
  Yeah, we can only set one title picture for a recipe. Noted down your question. > Any option to specify that differently as in your seed all files will be in the single folder and there will be mess on file system. I would for instance prefer to have a folder per recipe with cook file and images. That's a valid point, We assume that people only occasionally add images, but I can imagine its becoming messy. Maybe we should add alternative way. Noted this down as well.
garrickvanburen 5y ago
http://beerxml.com/ http://beerxml.com/
pstuart 5y ago
Brings to mind the recipe structures here: http://www.cookingforengineers.com/ http://www.cookingforengineers.com/
bjt2n3904 5y ago
I have to ask why ingredients with spaces are @salt and pepper{} Instead of @{salt and pepper} The latter seems far easier to parse.
culpable_pickle 5y ago
I was actually thinking about my wishlist for recipe apps the other day. Some key features: 1. Split up ingredients into more parts. 2 tbsp ground black pepper is actually: Quantity: 2 tbsp Ingredient: Black Pepper Preparation: Ground 2 finely chopped scallions, just the white parts Quantity: 2 Ingredient: Scallions Preparation: Finely Chopped Note: Just the white parts Often you'll have apps (like plan to eat) that adds the preparation to the ingredient and makes shopping lists much harder to manage 2. Ingredient replacements. Often you'll see recipes calling for one ingredient and then has "You can replace this with x and y". It would be extremely nice to have this programmatically available. I know if I can't find scallions, I can replace it with garlic and onions. 3. Variants. Often I have the same core recipe in my recipe book with just different variants. Meringue cookies with different flavors. 90% of the recipe is all the same, but it's duplicated a dozen times for a dozen specific flavor add-ins. It would be extremely nice to have this somehow programatically available, so I can have the base recipe and all the variants with a reused core :)
- dubadub 5y ago
  2 and 3 certainly useful features and some day we'll have it in Cooklang. As for 1. I had this before in spec: > To modify the ingredient any other way, use parentheses. > Add @onions{3}(finely chopped) to the mix... After some testing, it turned out that it makes the overall cooking flow a bit convoluted. This modifier is an implicit step of the recipe. Imagine that we have this modified ingredient in the middle of a recipe. I have my frying pan full of things and next step is to add onions. But I suddenly realised that it's time to finely chop onions and I don't have time for that. We can create these steps automatically and place them before everything else, but it may not be always the optimal way. Here it was removed: https://github.com/cooklang/cooklang-org/commit/1bd2f54c336379da0c4287c598bca502b7cec28b#diff-03461d0dfb4f81c8ad324ec60ebee82c2c3707031b02224367f970063fc484eeL42-L46 https://github.com/cooklang/cooklang-org/commit/1bd2f54c3363...
- rustyminnow 5y ago
  Agreed - I've always wished recipes would have two ingredients lists: one for shopping and one for prep. Like some recipes will call for half a cup of diced onions... So do I buy one onion or two? And recipes that spread ingredient prep throughout the steps make it a pain if you want to prep up front. Having a semantic list of ingredients means you could display them in whichever format is more helpful in the moment. My other gripe is when recipes tell you to prep 4 tbsp of an ingredient but aren't clear that you only use 3 in an early step and are supposed to save the other 1 tbsp for an end step. Not sure how this could be programmatically solved though
donatj 5y ago
I'm hopeful for some other parser implementations to crop up. It would be pretty neat to be able to build this into my personal note taking app.
igorrek 5y ago
I admire this effort and wish you a lot of success with it. I see three main problems: 1) tech people probably do not cook much and more order/eat out, so it is hard for me to imagine chefs/grandmas/not-tech-savvy people using it; 2) main problem for people cooking/experimenting is to decide what exactly to cook - and here you would usually go for something proven (e.g a cook-book or a website) 3) there is a reason not everyone can be a good recipe developer, because it takes a lot of experience and knowledge and you cannot really copy/paste and publish from existing pages/books. I am not sure if I would try a random "forked" recipe. Good luck, I am interested in what comes out of it!
- JustSomeNobody 5y ago
  I don't believe number one to be true at all (anecdotally). Every place I have worked, there's been cook-offs and engineering takes that challenge seriously.
JustSomeNobody 5y ago
This looks really cool. But...[0] I've tried a number of recipe apps, etc. and I got to tell you, most are just work. The worst are the ones that make you use a GUI with dropdowns for things like teaspoons or tablespoons. I use a wiki. I can cut and paste a recipe into it. I don't even really care much about markup; I can read it just fine. I can access them from laptop, iPad, etc just fine and I don't have to have the software installed on everything. [0] I know this isn't an app, it's markup, and like I said, looks really cool. Just seems like it would be more work than just using a wiki.
- jiggunjer 5y ago
  tables are a pain in wikitext though.
philsnow 5y ago
When reading a recipe I always end up mentally translating the prose / steps into a DAG, but I don't have enough short term memory to keep the DAG in my head so I'm constantly re-compiling as I'm working. When I write my own recipes (on index cards or whatever), I explicitly create the graph to make it easier to follow. Of all the links in this thread, the "Computerized Cooking" one most closely models my ideal setup, but I don't love the RxOL language. Maybe I'll make an s-exp version of it that exports diagrams someday.
jsilence 5y ago
Skimmed the comments expecting an Emacs mode for it.
- dubadub 5y ago
  Now we have it https://github.com/cooklang/cook-mode https://github.com/cooklang/cook-mode
defanor 5y ago
This reminds me of RDF recipe ontologies (as they can be used with RDFa: e.g., schema.org's Recipe[1] and the food ontology[2], and there are/were dedicated spiders to search those, such as openrecipes[3]), but with a custom syntax; might be nice to define mappings to/from those, for compatibility. Though unfortunately the larger open recipe databases I saw online tend to use custom (sometimes XML-based, at least) formats/structures, so there's nothing quite readily usable (that I'm aware of) as a result. [1] https://schema.org/Recipe https://schema.org/Recipe [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/fo https://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/fo [3] https://github.com/fictivekin/openrecipes https://github.com/fictivekin/openrecipes
otherflavors 5y ago
https://www.wedesoft.de/software/2020/07/07/mealmaster/ https://www.wedesoft.de/software/2020/07/07/mealmaster/
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
doublepg23 5y ago
Will need to check this out. I've been looking for a way to index my mother's recipes in a useful way, was somewhat motivated two years ago. I wanted something that: 1. produced well formatted PDFs for printing (my mother prefers paper). 2. it would substitute different ingredients. i.e. this recipe contains milk, a simple button or keybind would change it to an appropriate milk substitute. 3. automatically produced different measurements. I tried GNOME Recipes [1] as it checked a lot of boxes but it has some big bugs still that make it basically unusable. I considered maybe doing something org-mode and emacs, but kind of lost interest after that... [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Recipes https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Recipes
- dubadub 5y ago
  All great ideas, I've taken a note. I'm not sure about "3. automatically produced different measurements.". What do you mean by that?
  - doublepg23 5y ago
    Like the ability to double measurements. In the emacs example you'd be able to hit a key bind, enter how much to divide or multiply the recipe and it would automatically change it.
jiggunjer 5y ago
The landing page needs a rationale. Why does this product exist? i.e. what problem(s) does it try to solve? For me, I internalize all my recipes after I've made them a few times. The main problems I face are related to scaling and unit conversions. So ideally I'd like to publish an interactive web recipe that lets me input the amount of ingredient X I have (or amount of servings I want) and match the ingredient stochiometry in whatever units I choose.
- XCSme 5y ago
  I think the problem it solves is pretty clear: provide a standardized way to easily describe and share cooking recipes, which can further help with building apps or communities around this format.
  - jiggunjer 5y ago
    You don't mention any problem. You just restated what it does, not why.
    - XCSme 5y ago
      It's a tool, not a solution, you can use it for whatever you need that includes storing, filtering or displaying cooking recipes.
      - jiggunjer 5y ago
        so if I created tool that could be used to drive nails into wood, wouldn't you ask why I created it? i.e. what's wrong with the hammers we've been using so far? I'm not saying it's not a useful development, but a good product description helps adoption.
        XCSme 5y ago
        I think when it comes to CookLang, most users don't know of another similar tool, this is why it is attractive. If you said "I created a tool that can be used to drive nails into wood" and people had no idea hammers were thing, they would probably not ask "why you created it". Personally I never thought about this (Recipe Markup language) and was surprised to see in other comments that a Schema already exists for recipes, even though the Markup syntax looks a lot cleaner and easier to use.
XCSme 5y ago
This sounds awesome! Open-source cooking!

415 points by dubadub 5y ago

The only thing missing would be a substitute... for example "vinegar or lemon juice" is impossible to describe in the current language spec.

gizdan 5y ago
Lots missing really, you can add nutrition and scaling things to that list.
dubadub 5y ago
I'd suggest to open an issue for tracking in spec repo https://github.com/cooklang/spec https://github.com/cooklang/spec, so people can discuss different options.
dubadub 5y ago
Good point, any idea how it could look like?
- vborovikov 5y ago
  How about [@raw organic cane sugar, @honey]{3%tbsp} Here square brackets indicate that the ingredient will have variations separated by commas.
  - dubadub 5y ago
    Interesting idea, how about the case when quantity varies for different ingredient? For example 2 tbsp of raw organic cane sugar or 3 honey.
  - quisnam 5y ago
    Good idea. I'd prefer the at sign in front of the brackets, though. @[sugar, honey]{3%tbsp} It should be easier to parse and allows for brackets to be used elsewhere without escapes.
splatcollision 5y ago
You could be inspired by the link reference syntax from markdown, and use the following where subs are possible: add @acid{1%tsp} to @milk{1%cup} to create acidulated milk [acid]{lemon juice|apple cider vinegar} Anyway great spec and language!

tomlong 5y ago

Yesterday a friend remarked to me she had lost a recipe for something or other and I resolved to start recording some I use, I was thinking of something like MD/Obsidian but this looks really good. Great to have the iOS app, an easily convertable human readable and writable format and hang on to your own data. Going to give this a good look over today. Might think about an Obsidian plugin as well.

Master_Odin 5y ago

One thing that doesn't look possible from the spec is supporting recipes with multiple discrete parts. An immediate example for me would be I made a fish dish that had an optional salsa to put on top. I substituted the salsa for something else, so given a recipe, it would be nice to see "here are ingredients for the fish, here are the ingredients for salsa", and that they don't go into a unified singular count of ingredients.

zmix 5y ago

The most thorough format I know of (and which is the one I use) is http://www.formatdata.com/recipeml/ http://www.formatdata.com/recipeml/ Though, this here is much easier to edit. May need to create a converter ;-)

garfieldnate 5y ago

This is nerdy and probably superfluous but I actually love it! The .cook extension is such a cute touch. I actually do already store all of my recipes in .txt files, so maybe I'll convert them to this and create some shortcut scripts for quickly search my recipes while I'm at it :)

miguelrochefort 5y ago

It would be great if CookLang was compatible with, and compilable to, Schema.org's Recipe schemas [0]. Here's an interesting discussion on the subject of ingredient quantities [1]. [0] https://schema.org/Recipe https://schema.org/Recipe [1] https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/issues/882 https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/issues/882

dubadub 5y ago
Good idea, thank you for sharing
peter_retief 5y ago
I have tried the schema recipe schema but it was too complex for me. CookLang looks promising in that it might be simpler. I cook and I write code but never at the same time :)
mekkkkkk 5y ago
Just out of curiosity, is there any interop that you'd personally benefit from? I'm unfamiliar with schema.org's more ephemeral schemas and how commonly they are used.

pintxo 5y ago

This looks really fantastic. Is anyone working on let's name it CookHub already? So essentially GitHub for receipts. The nerd in me wants to fork receipts and share my small adaptations to the community.

dubadub 5y ago
Yeah, the same here :-). We created a placeholder repo https://github.com/cooklang/recipes https://github.com/cooklang/recipes, but it still subject to workout structure and probably it makes sense to standardise units in some way.
d--b 5y ago
That would be pretty cool. It would already work in github, but yeah a dedicated site would probably be better ;-). I'm afraid that the intersection of people interesting in cooking and people who know how source control works is likely pretty niche The other problem I have with community cooking websites is that usually people always underestimate the cooking time and that's annoying as hell. Like people would say you need to cook onions for 10 minutes, while onions take close to 25 minutes to be cooked. On the French website marmiton, it was so ubiquitous that they have moderators come in and fix people's recipes. Edit: see https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/05/how-to-cook-onions-why-recipe-writers-lie-and-lie-about-how-long-they-take-to-caramelize.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/05/how-to-cook-onions-...
- fiedzia 5y ago
  > people would say you need to cook onions for 10 minutes, while onions take close to 25 minutes to be cooked It's up to recipe author to define what they cook and how. If you think 25 min is better, fork it.
  - egeozcan 5y ago
    Or report the bug, which should probably have another name in this context.
- pintxo 5y ago

pintxo 5y ago

Also, any plans on how to convert between units?

dubadub 5y ago
Not yet solid, but there are ideas. For example, define units config in a way like that: "1l | 1000 ml | ...". The first value will be a preferred one and everything else will be converted. What do you think?
- pintxo 5y ago
  Might be the only viable way, as conversion factors are ingredient specific (e.g. Milk/Flour, Cups vs Liter/Grams)
  - rkangel 5y ago
    The language parser has the information to know what ingredient the unit is for though, so you could build a database of those conversions.

amir734jj 5y ago

What did you use for lexer and parser?? I couldn't find it on the GitHub front page/source code.

dubadub 5y ago
The parser is hand-made https://github.com/cooklang/CookInSwift https://github.com/cooklang/CookInSwift. I was reading a book "Crafting Interpreters" by Robert Nystrom (fantastic and atmospheric book!) and was eager to try it myself.

schleck8 5y ago

No support for Windows and Android?

dubadub 5y ago
This release is MVP, to test the waters. If people like the project we will definitely continue to expand to other platforms. I’m not 100% sure but it might work on windows in WSL already.
- supercheetah 5y ago
  I'm betting you could probably get away with just using MSYS to compile it for Windows
  - supercheetah 5y ago
    Ah, nevermind. I just noticed you're using Swift.
    - dubadub 5y ago
      I haven't tried it yet, but there's Swift support for Windows https://swift.org/blog/swift-on-windows/ https://swift.org/blog/swift-on-windows/
leetrout 5y ago
Maybe due to the Swift toolchain and what is easiest to get working first? (I have never used Swift)
- dubadub 5y ago
  You can try to run precompiled Linux binary, it’s statically linked so doesn’t have any dependencies (almost). Edit. Here is installation instructions https://github.com/cooklang/CookCLI#installation https://github.com/cooklang/CookCLI#installation

martinskou 5y ago

Looks nice. Now if we just had a good Markup Language for webdesign...

mysterydip 5y ago

What's the markup for "unrelated long-winded story because I wanted to be a writer"? :) Great idea, and I agree with another commenter that a github-style recipe sharing/forking system would be a good addition.

rexpop 5y ago
This is an unnecessarily harsh characterization. Recipe writers are constrained by economics, just like the rest of us. It's dismaying to see such cruel mockery on an industry forum. You may also want to look into Fundamental Attribution Error: recipe writers are "flawed", in your mind, but do you judge yourself so harshly? Likely, not. You probably excuse your own misbehavior as compelled by transient circumstance.
BasilPH 5y ago
I heard that the long-winded stories also serve to make the text longer for SEO purposes. i could imagine that it makes you stay longer on the page, because you look for the recipe. Also, more text equals more opportunities to insert ads.
kevinmchugh 5y ago
The intro serves a couple purposes. It ensured the text of the recipe was "below the jump" on RSS readers, so the audience had to go to the original sites (and see ads). It helps detect and trap plagiarists - it's copywritable, while a recipe isn't. But it also contextualizes the recipe. It's really important for me to understand if I'm seeing an easy weeknight favorite or a labor-of-love Sunday meal. Beyond just looking at the timing, I want to know how a cook thinks about the dish. If you open cookbooks, the intro spiel is common, and I often find it more helpful than the actual text of the recipe. There's a million places I can read a recipe for pad Thai, but Andy Ricker and Leela Punyaratabandhu have some deep insight that is very valuable. Certainly some authors are crappy writers and don't add value here - I don't follow those people. Googling for recipes will turn those people up too often.

dmitriid 5y ago

Every recipe (and recipe language) must include links to descriptions of ingredients and/or alternatives. I have no idea what a "medium victorian spring spruce potato is" or whatever it is you're using. In Sweden we have only two kinds: hard and soft. Same goes for basically everything else :)

dubadub 5y ago
That was the motivation. I had the same problem that recipes from the apps aren’t localised to local produce. Also sometimes I want to cut corners and do thing easier. I should be able to apply agile and maintain my recipes in my way :-)
Moru 5y ago
In north Sweden we have also only two kinds of potatoes. One is called Mandelpotatis, and then we have all the rest that noone buys. Seriously, if you don't like potatoes or think it's boring, try Mandelpotatis (if you can find it, it likes sandy, not very nutrious earth to grow or it will get sick and die :-) I have been thinking of a way of writing my recepies so I can process them into a database some day for easier search. I realised I would never have the energy to actually do it so I'm just switching to markdown and running a static webcompiler on them to output html with search function in javascript and upload to github. Works better than expected and have everything I need.
- morberg 5y ago
  Sounds like you have a similar setup to mine [1]. I have added PDF as an output format using pandoc. Also GitHub actions to automatically generate a new version when I push a commit. Would you mind sharing yours? I am always looking for inspiration and ways to improve. [1]: https://github.com/morberg/recept https://github.com/morberg/recept
  - Moru 5y ago
    Mine is just a default setup of this: https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/ https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/ Document folder structure similar to yours. I'm going to look through your collection, looks interesting :-)

ajot 5y ago

This looks very good! I hope Kookbook [0] (which I use without too much hassle) implements it. [0] https://github.com/KDE/kookbook https://github.com/KDE/kookbook

dubadub 5y ago
Nice! I wasn’t aware of that project. It has very similar idea. In cookcli there's a small web server too. It’s not fancy or very developed, but allows to check the recipe or manage shopping list

jimmyed 5y ago

Holy cow, I seemed like a fun little project until I saw the android AND iOS apps! Some folks don't know when to stop, or maybe that's most of us ..

thih9 5y ago

> Set oven to max temperature This instruction in the Neapolitan Pizza recipe got me interested. Surely there is an upper limit? Turns out the Wikipedia article about oven temperatures [1] has a dedicated entry: > Neapolitan pizza: 905°F (485°C) Which is way more than I expected. I guess this justifies the “set oven to max“. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oven_temperatures https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oven_temperatures

Kylekramer 5y ago
People will hack their ovens to run cleaning cycles without locking for pizza making purpose.
- stewx 5y ago
  Note: this will significantly reduce the life of your oven. The self-cleaning cycle is torture for the oven components. They are not really built to withstand the heat.
fastball 5y ago
Basically the reason there are pizza ovens is because they get way hotter than a normal oven.
flyingfences 5y ago
If you want to know all about pizza temperatures, check out a pro's breakdown. http://www.varasanos.com/pizzarecipe.htm http://www.varasanos.com/pizzarecipe.htm
- dubadub 5y ago
  Wow, that's an amazing link for someone like me who loves cooking pizza!

schmorptron 5y ago

This looks awesome! I wonder how difficult it would be to integrate it with Gnome Recipes?[0] The interface is really nice and even automatically makes shopping lists for you based on recipes and intended servings you selected. [0]https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Recipes https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Recipes

dubadub 5y ago
Nice app! Perhaps the app authors can integrate CookLang parser to import recipe files in CookLang.

roetlich 5y ago

Looks super good! I love the planned feature for adjusting servings. Converting units would probably be another cool feature.

dubadub 5y ago
Certainly, adding units to roadmap soon as well.
fartcannon 5y ago
Yeah, mix and match types because some of use are in silly countries that use mixed units.

brigandish 5y ago

I like it, a lot. However, the syntax for linking steps to pictures should be rethought, IMO, what if an image already has numbers in its filename? Could get confusing very quickly. Still, I think I'll try this out!

dubadub 5y ago
Agree, this was a last-minute hack. If you have an idea how to rethink this you can share one in a spec repo issues if you don't mind https://github.com/cooklang/spec https://github.com/cooklang/spec. Thanks!

hardmath123 5y ago

You might also like this little book, "Computational Cooking," which is also, in a way, a meditation on the language of recipes. http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/CompCook.html http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/CompCook.html

dubadub 5y ago
Great book, thanks for sharing!

dusted 5y ago

I suggest replacing % with a space between the amount and unit. @potatoes {1 kg} is a bit easier on the eyes

mekkkkkk 5y ago
Having an explicit delimiter allows for whitespace in either amount or unit. I suppose that's the reason. Can't seem to come up with an example for that on the fly though.
dubadub 5y ago
I agree, I thought about that. I expect that it can be some cases when either ingredients or units have spaces. And the problem is that I can't come up with a solid counter example. Something like @coriander{2%small batches}... You can open an issue in a spec repo so people can discuss https://github.com/cooklang/spec https://github.com/cooklang/spec.
- gizdan 5y ago
  Maybe using an underscore might make sense? i.e. {2_small batches}?

bwindsor 5y ago

I've been working on a stove safety/smart cooking device which is based on the temperature of your pan [0]. There are a small number of recipes which it currently works with [1]. To do this we defined a JSON format for recipes [2] but if we could use something similar to the text format used by CookLang that would be amazing, as it's much easier to write than JSON and could also be automatically rendered into a web page. Currently we are writing it twice - once in JSON for the cooking app, and once in human readable form. [0] https://mypippa.me/ https://mypippa.me/ [1] https://recipes.mypippa.me/ https://recipes.mypippa.me/ [2] https://recipes.mypippa.me/schemas/cookMLSchema3.0.json https://recipes.mypippa.me/schemas/cookMLSchema3.0.json

CraigJPerry 5y ago
Ha! This is one of the best ideas I’ve seen on HN. Just the safety thing alone has me hooked.
smashed 5y ago
The newsletter pop-up made your site unusable on mobile. Hard to close, and then it kept coming back. Obnoxious and rage inducing. I hate your product now.
- bwindsor 5y ago
  I'd be interested if there's research showing whether a one-off popup gives more signups or more annoyance. The marketing people seem to think it's better to have it there. I agree it's hard to close, I'll see if I can do something about that. It shouldn't keep coming back once closed, which browser are you using? Although it does come back if you refresh the page. I might be able to do something about that as well.
  - culpable_pickle 5y ago
    Personally, those popups are an immediate close tab for me. If you have no confidence in my wanting to sign up for your news letter after I've seen your content, I don't want to bother with your content at all.

weakty 5y ago

This is interesting. A year or two ago I tried creating my own web application [1] for cataloguing recipes. It involved creating a parser in Elm [2] that could handle JSON generated by org mode files (where I stored the recipes). It was far too convoluted - but it gave me some of the features that I wanted - simple pages with recipes, with hover-to-see-quantities, as well as a cooking timer. If I was to do it again, I might investigate using something like cooklang to see if I can get the same functionality out of it. [1] https://arisgarden.theiceshelf.com/recipe/sweet-potato-gnocci https://arisgarden.theiceshelf.com/recipe/sweet-potato-gnocc... [2]https://github.com/theiceshelf/arisgarden/blob/master/src/Pages/RecipeSingle.elm#L193-L219 https://github.com/theiceshelf/arisgarden/blob/master/src/Pa...

schleck8 5y ago

The website isn't linked on the Github repo yet

dubadub 5y ago
Thanks, will add the link

Riverheart 5y ago

This just a hobby project or will this evolve into a commercial offering?

dubadub 5y ago
It started as a hobby project to solve my personal needs: I really hate grocery shopping: it's repetitive and takes time. I decided to automate it, but couldn't find any robust tools for that. Also for a long time wanted to create a parser and this was a good opportunity. Current plan is to offer iOS and Android apps for a one-time fee. These apps are based on open-source language and parser (the same used by CLI), but a bit nicer and user friendlier.

ltr_ 5y ago

interesting language, didn't have the time to read the details/spec but, what i found most difficult when reading recipes on the internet that the ingredient names change dramatically between countries(event with the same spoken language), does this language attempt tackle that problem? also it would be nice to have alternatives for some ingredients.

dubadub 5y ago
Agreed, recipes often need localisation. The language itself agnostic to ingredients and doesn't provide any database. It's up to a user to tag ingredients so tools can recognise them and use in different ways. It's very easy to update a recipe file in a text format, so there shouldn't be an issue to quickly change names in a recipe you get from your friend overseas.

SergeAx 5y ago

Another TWO recipe markup standards: http://microformats.org/wiki/hrecipe http://microformats.org/wiki/hrecipe https://schema.org/Recipe https://schema.org/Recipe Mandatory xkcd link: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/

wds 5y ago
hRecipe looks like it's just HTML/entirely web-based, and Schema seems like it covers way more than it reasonably should. I personally think CookLang is the better of these, even this early on.
- madrox 5y ago
  hRecipe is over 10 years old, and the point of microformats is to extract semantic data from HTML. It's not really solving the same problem as CookLang in the way HTML and JSON aren't solving the same thing. While I don't know much about the history of Recipe in Schema, I find "covers way more than it reasonably should" to be an odd criticism of a format. I usually find it to be a mark of schema maturity. All concepts behind data formats have more complexity than an initial investigation would uncover (see also: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names[1]). If anything, it leads me to believe CookLang has a ways to go. 1: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...

tristor 5y ago

What is wrong with microformats2? I've been using hRecipe on my personal website for awhile.

majkinetor 5y ago

OMG nice. Small DSLs like this are wonderful. A question. How do I connect images to recipes. I usually have multiple for single recipe. It would be nice to have some keyword for that and/or configured location... On iOS app there is a picture for example, how is it represented in the .cook file ? I see Adding Pictures section but it says it should live in the same directory ? Any option to specify that differently as in your seed all files will be in the single folder and there will be mess on file system. I would for instance prefer to have a folder per recipe with cook file and images.

dubadub 5y ago
Yeah, we can only set one title picture for a recipe. Noted down your question. > Any option to specify that differently as in your seed all files will be in the single folder and there will be mess on file system. I would for instance prefer to have a folder per recipe with cook file and images. That's a valid point, We assume that people only occasionally add images, but I can imagine its becoming messy. Maybe we should add alternative way. Noted this down as well.

garrickvanburen 5y ago

http://beerxml.com/ http://beerxml.com/

pstuart 5y ago

Brings to mind the recipe structures here: http://www.cookingforengineers.com/ http://www.cookingforengineers.com/

bjt2n3904 5y ago

I have to ask why ingredients with spaces are @salt and pepper{} Instead of @{salt and pepper} The latter seems far easier to parse.

culpable_pickle 5y ago

I was actually thinking about my wishlist for recipe apps the other day. Some key features: 1. Split up ingredients into more parts. 2 tbsp ground black pepper is actually: Quantity: 2 tbsp Ingredient: Black Pepper Preparation: Ground 2 finely chopped scallions, just the white parts Quantity: 2 Ingredient: Scallions Preparation: Finely Chopped Note: Just the white parts Often you'll have apps (like plan to eat) that adds the preparation to the ingredient and makes shopping lists much harder to manage 2. Ingredient replacements. Often you'll see recipes calling for one ingredient and then has "You can replace this with x and y". It would be extremely nice to have this programmatically available. I know if I can't find scallions, I can replace it with garlic and onions. 3. Variants. Often I have the same core recipe in my recipe book with just different variants. Meringue cookies with different flavors. 90% of the recipe is all the same, but it's duplicated a dozen times for a dozen specific flavor add-ins. It would be extremely nice to have this somehow programatically available, so I can have the base recipe and all the variants with a reused core :)

dubadub 5y ago
2 and 3 certainly useful features and some day we'll have it in Cooklang. As for 1. I had this before in spec: > To modify the ingredient any other way, use parentheses. > Add @onions{3}(finely chopped) to the mix... After some testing, it turned out that it makes the overall cooking flow a bit convoluted. This modifier is an implicit step of the recipe. Imagine that we have this modified ingredient in the middle of a recipe. I have my frying pan full of things and next step is to add onions. But I suddenly realised that it's time to finely chop onions and I don't have time for that. We can create these steps automatically and place them before everything else, but it may not be always the optimal way. Here it was removed: https://github.com/cooklang/cooklang-org/commit/1bd2f54c336379da0c4287c598bca502b7cec28b#diff-03461d0dfb4f81c8ad324ec60ebee82c2c3707031b02224367f970063fc484eeL42-L46 https://github.com/cooklang/cooklang-org/commit/1bd2f54c3363...
rustyminnow 5y ago
Agreed - I've always wished recipes would have two ingredients lists: one for shopping and one for prep. Like some recipes will call for half a cup of diced onions... So do I buy one onion or two? And recipes that spread ingredient prep throughout the steps make it a pain if you want to prep up front. Having a semantic list of ingredients means you could display them in whichever format is more helpful in the moment. My other gripe is when recipes tell you to prep 4 tbsp of an ingredient but aren't clear that you only use 3 in an early step and are supposed to save the other 1 tbsp for an end step. Not sure how this could be programmatically solved though

donatj 5y ago

I'm hopeful for some other parser implementations to crop up. It would be pretty neat to be able to build this into my personal note taking app.

igorrek 5y ago

I admire this effort and wish you a lot of success with it. I see three main problems: 1) tech people probably do not cook much and more order/eat out, so it is hard for me to imagine chefs/grandmas/not-tech-savvy people using it; 2) main problem for people cooking/experimenting is to decide what exactly to cook - and here you would usually go for something proven (e.g a cook-book or a website) 3) there is a reason not everyone can be a good recipe developer, because it takes a lot of experience and knowledge and you cannot really copy/paste and publish from existing pages/books. I am not sure if I would try a random "forked" recipe. Good luck, I am interested in what comes out of it!

JustSomeNobody 5y ago
I don't believe number one to be true at all (anecdotally). Every place I have worked, there's been cook-offs and engineering takes that challenge seriously.

JustSomeNobody 5y ago

This looks really cool. But...[0] I've tried a number of recipe apps, etc. and I got to tell you, most are just work. The worst are the ones that make you use a GUI with dropdowns for things like teaspoons or tablespoons. I use a wiki. I can cut and paste a recipe into it. I don't even really care much about markup; I can read it just fine. I can access them from laptop, iPad, etc just fine and I don't have to have the software installed on everything. [0] I know this isn't an app, it's markup, and like I said, looks really cool. Just seems like it would be more work than just using a wiki.

jiggunjer 5y ago
tables are a pain in wikitext though.

philsnow 5y ago

When reading a recipe I always end up mentally translating the prose / steps into a DAG, but I don't have enough short term memory to keep the DAG in my head so I'm constantly re-compiling as I'm working. When I write my own recipes (on index cards or whatever), I explicitly create the graph to make it easier to follow. Of all the links in this thread, the "Computerized Cooking" one most closely models my ideal setup, but I don't love the RxOL language. Maybe I'll make an s-exp version of it that exports diagrams someday.

jsilence 5y ago

Skimmed the comments expecting an Emacs mode for it.

dubadub 5y ago
Now we have it https://github.com/cooklang/cook-mode https://github.com/cooklang/cook-mode

defanor 5y ago

This reminds me of RDF recipe ontologies (as they can be used with RDFa: e.g., schema.org's Recipe[1] and the food ontology[2], and there are/were dedicated spiders to search those, such as openrecipes[3]), but with a custom syntax; might be nice to define mappings to/from those, for compatibility. Though unfortunately the larger open recipe databases I saw online tend to use custom (sometimes XML-based, at least) formats/structures, so there's nothing quite readily usable (that I'm aware of) as a result. [1] https://schema.org/Recipe https://schema.org/Recipe [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/fo https://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/fo [3] https://github.com/fictivekin/openrecipes https://github.com/fictivekin/openrecipes

otherflavors 5y ago

https://www.wedesoft.de/software/2020/07/07/mealmaster/ https://www.wedesoft.de/software/2020/07/07/mealmaster/

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

doublepg23 5y ago

Will need to check this out. I've been looking for a way to index my mother's recipes in a useful way, was somewhat motivated two years ago. I wanted something that: 1. produced well formatted PDFs for printing (my mother prefers paper). 2. it would substitute different ingredients. i.e. this recipe contains milk, a simple button or keybind would change it to an appropriate milk substitute. 3. automatically produced different measurements. I tried GNOME Recipes [1] as it checked a lot of boxes but it has some big bugs still that make it basically unusable. I considered maybe doing something org-mode and emacs, but kind of lost interest after that... [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Recipes https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Recipes

dubadub 5y ago
All great ideas, I've taken a note. I'm not sure about "3. automatically produced different measurements.". What do you mean by that?
- doublepg23 5y ago
  Like the ability to double measurements. In the emacs example you'd be able to hit a key bind, enter how much to divide or multiply the recipe and it would automatically change it.

jiggunjer 5y ago

The landing page needs a rationale. Why does this product exist? i.e. what problem(s) does it try to solve? For me, I internalize all my recipes after I've made them a few times. The main problems I face are related to scaling and unit conversions. So ideally I'd like to publish an interactive web recipe that lets me input the amount of ingredient X I have (or amount of servings I want) and match the ingredient stochiometry in whatever units I choose.

XCSme 5y ago
I think the problem it solves is pretty clear: provide a standardized way to easily describe and share cooking recipes, which can further help with building apps or communities around this format.
- jiggunjer 5y ago
  You don't mention any problem. You just restated what it does, not why.
  - XCSme 5y ago
    It's a tool, not a solution, you can use it for whatever you need that includes storing, filtering or displaying cooking recipes.
    - jiggunjer 5y ago
      so if I created tool that could be used to drive nails into wood, wouldn't you ask why I created it? i.e. what's wrong with the hammers we've been using so far? I'm not saying it's not a useful development, but a good product description helps adoption.
      - XCSme 5y ago
        I think when it comes to CookLang, most users don't know of another similar tool, this is why it is attractive. If you said "I created a tool that can be used to drive nails into wood" and people had no idea hammers were thing, they would probably not ask "why you created it". Personally I never thought about this (Recipe Markup language) and was surprised to see in other comments that a Schema already exists for recipes, even though the Markup syntax looks a lot cleaner and easier to use.

XCSme 5y ago

This sounds awesome! Open-source cooking!