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Show HN: I built a no-BS recipe search engine

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Re: Show HN: I built a no-BS recipe search engine

#91

Post by artursapek »

OJFord wrote: post #39
artursapek wrote: post #32

I have wanted to build something like this, but the real pain point to solve is recipe blogs are a pain to navigate. They’re covered in ads, popups, and the first 50% of the page is some story that nobody wants to read. What we need is wikipedia for cooking.

The problem with that is that recipes are inherently more like blog than Wikipedia articles - they're so personal. Who are you to edit the number of chillies in OJFord's palak paneer, for example? Wikipedia has a 'first come first stays' policy for British/American spelling - applying that to recipes would be disastrous, giving me the final say on how to make the de facto custard, just because I created the page befo…

Fair points, I'm not saying all of Wiki's policies need to apply. I'm just saying the format and ease of consuming content is good, and there's nothing popular for cooking with those qualities.

Re: Show HN: I built a no-BS recipe search engine

#92

Post by cushychicken »

tonymet wrote: post #81

Great tool to improve the dismal experience of searching recipes online. To intrepid cooks I encourage getting a good cookbook, e.g. from Julia Child or Mark Bittman – where you can learn cooking fundamentals and techniques aimed to teach you how to cook self-sufficiently. Break away from recipes and you’ll be dancing around your kitchen to your own culinary tune instead of recreating mediocre click bait.

My latest favorite is Cook it in Cast Iron from Cook's Country.

No recipe in it has been bad. One or two have been "too much work to be worth it", but on average, the food has been good to excellent.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00X2E308K/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

Re: Show HN: I built a no-BS recipe search engine

#93

Post by swalsh »

whoomp12342 wrote: post #33

next level: mining the sites for the content and getting rid of the recipe's life story. to me, no-bs means ingredients and instructions. Maybe a few pictures of the target meal. thats it.

I've automated my meal planning using a command line app I wrote in python (https://github.com/steven-p-walsh/menuplannercmd) The app tries to estimate the best menu based on what I like, what I have, what i've made in the past, and something I call slots, which let me give myself more or less time to cook. I also add some randomness to keep things fresh.

As i've built the app, I realized I almost never care about anything more than a rough estimate of the ingredients needed. Even then, I really only care about a few key ingredients. Here is an example (https://github.com/steven-p-walsh/menuplannercmd/blob/master...)

Re: Show HN: I built a no-BS recipe search engine

#94

Post by InfiniteRand »

ffumarola wrote: post #13

Some thoughts: 1) Clean up the plural duplicates, e.g. peanut/peanuts, leek/leeks, carrot/carrots, etc. 2) I've never considered the author, is that common? 3) Mode to toggle pictures on would help scanning, cooking is very visual 4) Not simple to design, but some way to have either/or ingredients (e.g. peanuts OR cashews) could be useful

spelling variations are also an issue, like fettuccine vs fettucine, not sure if there's an easy solution for that

Re: Show HN: I built a no-BS recipe search engine

#95

Post by Mikeb85 »

jonathankoren wrote: post #87
Mikeb85 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Volume measurement for flour is inconsistent and annoying. Metric and by weight is by far the best format for recipes and best way to measure ingredients. In professional kitchens it's all we ever used (I used to work in some top restaurants, talking world's 50 best back in the day).

The reason why volume measurements developed in the US rather mass measurements can be traced back to Frankie Farmer’s The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book of 1896. The first cookbook with accurate and repeatable recipes. Volume measurements were a practical matter. Every kitchen had measuring cups. No one had a scale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boston_Cooking-School_Cook...

And now you can buy a digital scale for like $20. It's the 21st century, weight measurements are way more accurate, easier too for small quantities.

Re: Show HN: I built a no-BS recipe search engine

#96

Post by OJFord »

artursapek wrote: post #91
OJFord wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with that is that recipes are inherently more like blog than Wikipedia articles - they're so personal. Who are you to edit the number of chillies in OJFord's palak paneer, for example? Wikipedia has a 'first come first stays' policy for British/American spelling - applying that to recipes would be disastrous, giving me the final say on how to make the de facto custard, just because I created the page befo…

Fair points, I'm not saying all of Wiki's policies need to apply. I'm just saying the format and ease of consuming content is good, and there's nothing popular for cooking with those qualities.

Yes, sorry if I seemed too dismissive, I agree and like the idea on the surface, it's just to me what makes the format and ease of consuming Wikipedia good is that there's one page for everything, not a bunch of conflicting entries for the same thing. (Well, any encyclopaedia!)

But you can't achieve that with recipes, because they're not encyclopaedic entries, they're one person's opinion piece on how to make a nice , like a blog post.

I suppose the slight flaw in my argument is that you can have competing encyclopaedia publishers - choose your namespace, your single source of truth, within which there's the one entry...

Re: Show HN: I built a no-BS recipe search engine

#98

Post by dmje »

kokekolo wrote: post #66
VRay wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, what a disappointing thread.. the BBC site is great except it’s all weird British ingredients and units (how do I convert grams of British flour into cups of American flour without a scale?) The OP’s site is a really nice search engine, but it dumps you into the recipes’ unreadable SEO trash pit websites instead of parsing out the data PlainOldRecipe isn’t working to strip recipes down for me

As someone who lived in the US for 8 years... How much is a cup?

A cup is exactly three tenths of a half of a metre wide/long divided by the inverse square of a millilitre, provided the initial measurement was in cubic zlotys at half a pint over Pi.

Re: Show HN: I built a no-BS recipe search engine

#99

Post by john-tells-all »

tonymet wrote: post #81

Great tool to improve the dismal experience of searching recipes online. To intrepid cooks I encourage getting a good cookbook, e.g. from Julia Child or Mark Bittman – where you can learn cooking fundamentals and techniques aimed to teach you how to cook self-sufficiently. Break away from recipes and you’ll be dancing around your kitchen to your own culinary tune instead of recreating mediocre click bait.

This!

Cookbooks have editors, and the recipes are tested so they can be made with common ingredients. They want cooks to be successful!

Oddly I've found cookbook recipes to ALWAYS be better than online recipes. Book recipes tend to be shorter, clearer, and more successful. Online recipes are okay but sometimes don't come out the way I'd expect, they're more fiddly.

It's great to have options!

Re: Show HN: I built a no-BS recipe search engine

#100

Post by jdavis703 »

Larrikin wrote: post #65
VRay wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, what a disappointing thread.. the BBC site is great except it’s all weird British ingredients and units (how do I convert grams of British flour into cups of American flour without a scale?) The OP’s site is a really nice search engine, but it dumps you into the recipes’ unreadable SEO trash pit websites instead of parsing out the data PlainOldRecipe isn’t working to strip recipes down for me

Not sure if calling the metric system weird is actually serious or not but the solution is to get a scale. Modern cooking highly utilizes the scale and probe thermometers. They seem unimportant to the new cook but I end up using one or both for nearly all my meals now. Dry ingredients especially should be done by weight.

If you’re baking, sure measure by weight for best results. If you’re cooking basic, non-technical meals it’s more about proportions than anything else.
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