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Show HN: An API for scraping recipe web pages

choppingboard.recipes

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Re: Show HN: An API for scraping recipe web pages

#91

Post by greglindahl »

zaque1213 wrote: post #80
mikepurvis wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to build a little recipe DB along these lines years ago. What I ended up finding is that as I improved in my own food preparation skills, my interest in super-rigid recipes of this form diminished. Basically, there's just a lot of slush and room for experimentation in cooking. Think about making a stir fry— how many people would level off exact masses of different vegetables to combine in perfect proportion?…

Mark Bittman was the second biggest influencer of the way I prepare food. The first was a college roommate, who literally improvised everything he cooked, as far as ingredients and proportions go, and it tasted amazing every time. It opened my eyes to how subjective cooking can be. I tried Blue Apron once. So boring.

Mark Bittman is one of the people behind Purple Carrot.

Re: Show HN: An API for scraping recipe web pages

#93

Post by irrational »

mikepurvis wrote: post #69
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #4

This really seems to be an exercise in 'structuring recipe data' rather than the ins-and-outs of scraping. Seems like a much-needed task; is there anything approaching a 'standard' for recipe data already? "ingredients": [ "600g pineapple, peeled, chopped" ] This seems like a prime candidate for improvement; something like the following would seem to be more useful: "ingredients": [{ "ingredient": "pineapple", "quant…

I tried to build a little recipe DB along these lines years ago. What I ended up finding is that as I improved in my own food preparation skills, my interest in super-rigid recipes of this form diminished. Basically, there's just a lot of slush and room for experimentation in cooking. Think about making a stir fry— how many people would level off exact masses of different vegetables to combine in perfect proportion?…

Cooking is an art form. Baking is a science.

Re: Show HN: An API for scraping recipe web pages

#94

Post by keithasaurus »

I can't access the linked page, but I run https://www.cinc.kitchen. It tries to be the GitHub for recipes, but also has some of the most advanced scaling and parsing available. So a lot of thought has gone into how data is organized and processed.

On scrapers specifically, cinc's recipe importer is decent, but mainly relies on structured meta data.

There's a lot of room to improve these tools though. Lots of complexity and edge cases with recipes :)

Happy to answer questions people have about this stuff.

Re: Show HN: An API for scraping recipe web pages

#95

Post by pjc50 »

tinebak wrote: post #89
k3oni wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well not sure what it might be, but as the previous poster got pizza all over i'm into salmon apparently, in 2 pages and 95% recipes are all about salmon :)

How weird, it IS all salmon! :) The front page can have a bit of a theme if someone quickly copies in a lot of similar recipes, for example, if he/she is looking for the best salmon recipes from around the web. However, the front page is limited to three recipes from any given person's recipe box. The front page might also show several copies of the same recipe if that recipe suddenly becomes very popular. However, t…

Maybe make the front page show a random subset of the top 10% most popular, or something?

Re: Show HN: An API for scraping recipe web pages

#96

Post by canes123456 »

mikepurvis wrote: post #69
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #4

This really seems to be an exercise in 'structuring recipe data' rather than the ins-and-outs of scraping. Seems like a much-needed task; is there anything approaching a 'standard' for recipe data already? "ingredients": [ "600g pineapple, peeled, chopped" ] This seems like a prime candidate for improvement; something like the following would seem to be more useful: "ingredients": [{ "ingredient": "pineapple", "quant…

I tried to build a little recipe DB along these lines years ago. What I ended up finding is that as I improved in my own food preparation skills, my interest in super-rigid recipes of this form diminished. Basically, there's just a lot of slush and room for experimentation in cooking. Think about making a stir fry— how many people would level off exact masses of different vegetables to combine in perfect proportion?…

I agree that the much of the value of recipes is as a source of new techniques and combinations. However, I strongly prefer precise recipes vs vague recipes. A recipe should be reproducible as much as possible. I can choose to make changes or combine another recipe based on my priorities. However, vagueness in a recipe adds randomness on top of your changes. If precision for a single element does not matter or varies unpredictably that should be called out. Precision also helps me understand how different recipes can be combined into something new.

If you are just giving me a technique or idea then write the article that expresses that. The recipe should be precise but the real value comes from the prose.

Re: Show HN: An API for scraping recipe web pages

#97

Post by mikepurvis »

nkrisc wrote: post #85
mikepurvis wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to build a little recipe DB along these lines years ago. What I ended up finding is that as I improved in my own food preparation skills, my interest in super-rigid recipes of this form diminished. Basically, there's just a lot of slush and room for experimentation in cooking. Think about making a stir fry— how many people would level off exact masses of different vegetables to combine in perfect proportion?…

I 100% agree with you. Perhaps this kind of structure would be better suited to baking recipes? This sort of precision (amounts, timing, even order of ingredients) can be very important when baking.

Even there, I'm not too sure. I've found bread baking to be shockingly tolerant to variation— as long as I do 1tsp dried yeast per cup of water, and about 1.5 cups of water per loaf, it turns out beautifully. And if there's not enough yeast or it's rising slowly, whatever, just give it another hour to do its thing.

Anyway, that's across white, part whole wheat, part rye, and includes all kinds of additives like bran, wheat germ, cheese, herbs, roasted garlic, even tossing in a pot of leftover porridge from breakfast. Basic bread is almost impossible to screw up.

Re: Show HN: An API for scraping recipe web pages

#98

Post by mikepurvis »

canes123456 wrote: post #96
mikepurvis wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to build a little recipe DB along these lines years ago. What I ended up finding is that as I improved in my own food preparation skills, my interest in super-rigid recipes of this form diminished. Basically, there's just a lot of slush and room for experimentation in cooking. Think about making a stir fry— how many people would level off exact masses of different vegetables to combine in perfect proportion?…

I agree that the much of the value of recipes is as a source of new techniques and combinations. However, I strongly prefer precise recipes vs vague recipes. A recipe should be reproducible as much as possible. I can choose to make changes or combine another recipe based on my priorities. However, vagueness in a recipe adds randomness on top of your changes. If precision for a single element does not matter or varies…

That's fair, and perhaps precision could be part of the structure. The default is "exactly", but there are options for adding according to taste, judgment, mood, whatever, and some way of expressing a suggested range.

The Joy of Cooking's waffle recipe suggests 1/2c butter, but says you can drop that to 1/4c or bump it to 1c depending on how decadently crisp you want the result to be.

Note also that a lot of times the variations are to account for some other inherent variation, like adjusting the sugar in a pie depending on how sweet your fruit is.

Re: Show HN: An API for scraping recipe web pages

#99

Post by tinebak »

pjc50 wrote: post #95
tinebak wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How weird, it IS all salmon! :) The front page can have a bit of a theme if someone quickly copies in a lot of similar recipes, for example, if he/she is looking for the best salmon recipes from around the web. However, the front page is limited to three recipes from any given person's recipe box. The front page might also show several copies of the same recipe if that recipe suddenly becomes very popular. However, t…

Maybe make the front page show a random subset of the top 10% most popular, or something?

I do need to look a lot more into the whole Community search aspect of Copy Me That. So many fun things that I want to do :)

Re: Show HN: An API for scraping recipe web pages

#100

Post by canes123456 »

mikepurvis wrote: post #98
canes123456 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the much of the value of recipes is as a source of new techniques and combinations. However, I strongly prefer precise recipes vs vague recipes. A recipe should be reproducible as much as possible. I can choose to make changes or combine another recipe based on my priorities. However, vagueness in a recipe adds randomness on top of your changes. If precision for a single element does not matter or varies…

That's fair, and perhaps precision could be part of the structure. The default is "exactly", but there are options for adding according to taste, judgment, mood, whatever, and some way of expressing a suggested range. The Joy of Cooking's waffle recipe suggests 1/2c butter, but says you can drop that to 1/4c or bump it to 1c depending on how decadently crisp you want the result to be. Note also that a lot of times th…

"That's fair, and perhaps precision could be part of the structure. The default is "exactly", but there are options for adding according to taste, judgment, mood, whatever, and some way of expressing a suggested range."

Yes, that is ideal. List exactly what you did in your ingredients list. Then add information about what you change and the impact of this. Kenji López-Alt's recipe is the perfect example of this. I prefer starting from the Jacques Torres' recipe but I still go back to Kenji's article. It shows me the impact of moving any of the dials for the cookie I want.

"Note also that a lot of times the variations are to account for some other inherent variation, like adjusting the sugar in a pie depending on how sweet your fruit is."

Yes, but that should be called out.

The key thing is that a recipe should be an actual recipe. It should be precise documentation that allows you to reproduce a product as much as possible. Prose is what actually is teaching you how to cook.

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