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I'm always slightly surprised at the "engineers mindset" that many people on this site and other seem to approach recipes: the notion that a recipe as a context
by SamBam 4y ago
I'm always slightly surprised at the "engineers mindset" that many people on this site and other seem to approach recipes: the notion that a recipe as a context-free collection of ingredients and steps.
Yes, I know "long stories about last year's vacation where we ate such and such" get a lot of universal, justifiable hate. Everyone detests scrolling through "recipes" laden with ads and useless copy and photos.
But, to me, these kinds of database sites lose two important elements: the source of the recipe, and useful comments, from both the author and the readers.
Perhaps it's because I cook a lot, but I can't imagine just Googling "pasta carbonara" and following the first hit (pretending it was nicely formatted without ads). 90% of recipes online are seriously mediocre. For me, either I already know and trust the author (Serious Eats, many New York Times authors, etc), or I need to do a bit of work to decide whether they are the real deal.
(As an aside, I think that this is the source of the long-winded stories. Back in the day, when it wasn't so bad, I followed a handful of recipe bloggers and got to know and trust their recipes through their blogs. It seems so crap now because (1) they've so much longer, and (2) when we land on the top search of someone we don't know, it just seems like useless noise.)
For the second point, if you look at, say, a New York Times recipe, there's usually one, maybe two paragraphs of context about the dish itself (not stories of vacations). It's useful stuff. It tells you what you can substitute, it tells you the way this is and isn't authentic, it gives you hints on the tricky parts. And then the comments at the bottom will do all that and more, pointing out the recipe's flaws and improvements.
Where a database can come in useful for me is after I've fully vetted and digested the recipe, I'll add it to my own. But using a database to find a recipe has never been interesting to me, personally.
- nsemikey 4y agoThanks - I understand where you're coming from. I didn't build this from an engineer's mindset though, but as a novice cook who just needs to make quick meals for my family. So just wanted to solve my own problem. I'm sure other people enjoy the backstory/context and have the time to digest them, so a single recipe site won't be a one size fits all, this just works for me.
- tpetry 4y agoWhich means we need a simple database of ingredients/steps and a maybe 300 words introduction. Anyone doing that will crush the market because usability for recipe website went so bad in the past years. And add steps in a visual + text format like KptnCook.
- guhidalg 4y agoHi, this is exactly what I built https://letscooktime.com https://letscooktime.com for! Let me know what you think :)
- beardedetim 4y ago> But using a database to find a recipe has never been interesting to me, personally. I've built a few toy apps like everyone else and found the same feeling when it was just a CRUD listing app of recipes that I could search. What I found was an interesting take and one I'm wanting to take further is I want not recommendations on recipes but _almost_ generation of recipes. So when I search "Chile Colorado" it returns a specific recipe that I created but for each "step" it "links" to relations/more info/etc. Example: Ingredients: - 1lb beef <this is the recipe itself either from a source or you put it in> - Ribeye is best <this is from the recipe itself and notes you made on this specific ingredient> - Sometimes substituting chicken is healthier <linked from some other recipe about beef that you saved once> - This doesn't double like most things do if you are making more portions <linked from some private notes you made about cooking> - .... Do you think that caries the context enough? Or do you think that you would just much rather have a list of vetted + manually entered ones?
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