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Many years ago I experimented with making recipes into Gantt charts. For more complex recipes this proved incredibly useful. I spent some time trying to automat

Many years ago I experimented with making recipes into Gantt charts. For more complex recipes this proved incredibly useful. I spent some time trying to automate turning some of the recipe formats into Gantts, but it was pretty cumbersome. I'll bet a good LLM would make this achievable now. For an example, here's a gantt chart for Beef Bourguignon: https://ibb.co/c3TVTnX https://ibb.co/c3TVTnX Note that when I print it on a (physical) recipe card, I have the 'prose' instructions underneath. I still think this is a pretty good idea, and I still use the cards for this recipe, and Beef Wellington.

ahnick 2y ago
Reminds me of the cookingforengineers.com format to some degree. Here's an example. You'll need to scroll down to see the actual recipe format. https://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/194/Cream-of-Mushroom-Soup https://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/194/Cream-of-Mush...
- numlocked 2y ago
  Hmm interesting. But I have to confess I have no idea, intuitively, how to read that format. I’m sure it works once you understand it, but if you need an instruction manual for the format then maybe you’ve lost the plot a bit.
  - ahnick 2y ago
    It reads left to right, top to bottom. Ingredients are on the left and then each step boxes around the items involved in that step. Using the mushroom soup recipe as an example: (1) Melt the butter. (2) Wash and dice the onions, celery, and leeks. (3) Sweat the melted butter from step (1) and the diced onions, celery, and leeks from step (2) together for 6 minutes.
- numlocked 2y ago
  After reading another comment here about a recipe being an “upside down tree” I now understand what at least this format is trying to accomplish. It has some really nice properties, but trades off a key feature of the gantt format: your hands can only be doing one thing at a time. With the gantt format it’s very clear what you are supposed to be doing at any time and it preserves the order of operations. It doesn’t express how things are combined, however, which the tree format accomplishes. My motivation for the gantt format was to prevent getting “meanwhiled” by a recipe. You are chugging along, and think you are in good shape, and come across that dastardly word in a recipe: Meanwhile. Turns out you should have beaten the eggs to a stiff whip 15 minutes ago.
  - ahnick 2y ago
    > but trades off a key feature of the gantt format: your hands can only be doing one thing at a time. With the gantt format it’s very clear what you are supposed to be doing at any time and it preserves the order of operations. In the cookingforengineers.com (COE) format, the order is to do each step in the first column and then move right to the next column and do those steps, etc.
bilalq 2y ago
Oh, I really like the idea of using Gantt charts for meals. If you're trying to serve a bunch of hot dishes at the same time in the end and are constrained in terms of keep warm/crispy/moist options, starting/stopping things at the right time can be critical.
0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
I use a version of this preparing for the holidays when I have multiple dishes all trying to finish at approximately the same time. I use a vertical grid format, top to bottom, with rows bucketed into 10 minute increments. Columns are different cooking implements, so I can ensure I am not over allocating space in the oven/microwave/whatever nor my ability to manipulate the next dish. Makes it trivial to assess where I am in preparing everything on game day. Also, it gives me a historical artifact for the meal. Which is unexpectedly neat to reference.
askvictor 2y ago
I was having this discussion with a workmate. Where this approach really shines is when you need arrange a number of recipe (for example, for a dinner party). Being able to put together different recipe modules into a meal, then know when to do each section would be fun. Though totally over thinking it.

ahnick 2y ago

Reminds me of the cookingforengineers.com format to some degree. Here's an example. You'll need to scroll down to see the actual recipe format. https://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/194/Cream-of-Mushroom-Soup https://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/194/Cream-of-Mush...

numlocked 2y ago
Hmm interesting. But I have to confess I have no idea, intuitively, how to read that format. I’m sure it works once you understand it, but if you need an instruction manual for the format then maybe you’ve lost the plot a bit.
- ahnick 2y ago
  It reads left to right, top to bottom. Ingredients are on the left and then each step boxes around the items involved in that step. Using the mushroom soup recipe as an example: (1) Melt the butter. (2) Wash and dice the onions, celery, and leeks. (3) Sweat the melted butter from step (1) and the diced onions, celery, and leeks from step (2) together for 6 minutes.
numlocked 2y ago
After reading another comment here about a recipe being an “upside down tree” I now understand what at least this format is trying to accomplish. It has some really nice properties, but trades off a key feature of the gantt format: your hands can only be doing one thing at a time. With the gantt format it’s very clear what you are supposed to be doing at any time and it preserves the order of operations. It doesn’t express how things are combined, however, which the tree format accomplishes. My motivation for the gantt format was to prevent getting “meanwhiled” by a recipe. You are chugging along, and think you are in good shape, and come across that dastardly word in a recipe: Meanwhile. Turns out you should have beaten the eggs to a stiff whip 15 minutes ago.
- ahnick 2y ago
  > but trades off a key feature of the gantt format: your hands can only be doing one thing at a time. With the gantt format it’s very clear what you are supposed to be doing at any time and it preserves the order of operations. In the cookingforengineers.com (COE) format, the order is to do each step in the first column and then move right to the next column and do those steps, etc.

bilalq 2y ago

Oh, I really like the idea of using Gantt charts for meals. If you're trying to serve a bunch of hot dishes at the same time in the end and are constrained in terms of keep warm/crispy/moist options, starting/stopping things at the right time can be critical.

0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago

I use a version of this preparing for the holidays when I have multiple dishes all trying to finish at approximately the same time. I use a vertical grid format, top to bottom, with rows bucketed into 10 minute increments. Columns are different cooking implements, so I can ensure I am not over allocating space in the oven/microwave/whatever nor my ability to manipulate the next dish. Makes it trivial to assess where I am in preparing everything on game day. Also, it gives me a historical artifact for the meal. Which is unexpectedly neat to reference.

askvictor 2y ago

I was having this discussion with a workmate. Where this approach really shines is when you need arrange a number of recipe (for example, for a dinner party). Being able to put together different recipe modules into a meal, then know when to do each section would be fun. Though totally over thinking it.