The idea sounded kinda cool at first but the first screenshots have "deli sandwich" and "you've unlocked the cheeseburger recipe"... really?
Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking
111–120 of 377 posts
Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking
#112I've had very similar ideas, and although I can't quite get the vision of how you're organizing the material since your last pivot, I want to throw in a few ideas (that you may be already doing.) 1) Cooking skills are physical acts of dexterity and timing that can be explained and modeled by text and videos, but not mastered. This is a good place for the use of spaced repetition; every time someone makes a recipe tha…
> 1) Cooking skills are physical acts of dexterity and timing that can be explained and modeled by text and videos, but not mastered.
Not sure I agree - I actually get a lot of value out of videos for cooking techniques and they can often nip bad habits in the bud.
For instance, I recently discovered a new method for matchsticking carrots from a video that i really like.
Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking
#113Please, please, please, avoid status cuisines . It's going to be hard to do, because they make good PR. But you will be helping your users a lot more of you hold them off with a ten foot pole. What do I mean by a status cuisine ? They are meals that are intended to show that the cook is a worthy person, rather than that the meal is practical, healthy, and good to eat. Here are some examples: The endurance cuisine: de…
> I really do think a lot of recipes are unnecessarily onerous in some way Cooking is different things for different people. I feel like tech people see it as nothing but sustenance (yay Soylent!), so the idea is for it to be quick, cheap and easy. For other people it's a hobby and they actually enjoy the process. Grinding your own grain or peeling grapes can increase the food quality, and it takes nothing but time,…
Sure - as I said, partly tongue in cheek. The problem is really that as a cooking-ignorant person, it's work to figure out if a recipe is going to be time consuming, expensive, or require obscure, or (to the naive palate) unpleasant ingredients. I've no problem with other people doing whatever floats their boat, but if the app is supposed to be an easy introduction to cooking it should at least place that stuff behind a flag of some kind.
Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking
#114Please, please, please, avoid status cuisines . It's going to be hard to do, because they make good PR. But you will be helping your users a lot more of you hold them off with a ten foot pole. What do I mean by a status cuisine ? They are meals that are intended to show that the cook is a worthy person, rather than that the meal is practical, healthy, and good to eat. Here are some examples: The endurance cuisine: de…
> I really do think a lot of recipes are unnecessarily onerous in some way Cooking is different things for different people. I feel like tech people see it as nothing but sustenance (yay Soylent!), so the idea is for it to be quick, cheap and easy. For other people it's a hobby and they actually enjoy the process. Grinding your own grain or peeling grapes can increase the food quality, and it takes nothing but time,…
There are endless resources for the second type of person; it's the person who wants to make nacho cheese sauce that is underserved. Once you've got them to make that, you got somebody who can also make gravies and bechamel, and you can suggest other things they they might want to try to cook after they're pretty good at nachos.
Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking
#115there a web version? My phone is too old.
Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking
#116I've done a few quizzes on the app now, and I don't get it. The questions feel very contrived, like someone had a quota to fill so just put whatever looked plausible together. They are also _very_ culturally specific. Questions about eggs barely made sense to me being from the UK, with incorrect pack sizes, animal welfare terms, and completely missed our great standards body that makes it easy to know which eggs have…
It sounds like you're a pretty experienced chef and we're targeting beginners (that experience question was more to get a sense of who our users are).
If you consider that we're trying to start with levels 1, 2, and 3 of cooking before moving on to the far more advanced topics, do you still think it's useless? Or does your perspective change?
Thanks for the note about the questions that are potentially culturally insulting. I actually have a wok at home so I'm gonna look into that one personally!
Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe because they're targeting users under 13. I also saw this and got very concerned, until I read the beginning but of the Privacy Policy. I'd love a clarification, say, that they don't somehow do this for adult users of the app.
> I believe because they're targeting users under 13. This. The average age of people who watch cooking shows is ~11.
Citation needed. I do not believe that number, 11, is close to correct for median or average.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/228950/cable-tv-networks...
https://www.marketingcharts.com/television-13719
https://brandongaille.com/40-captivating-food-network-demogr...
https://corporate.discovery.com/discovery-newsroom/food-netw...
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/video/m...
Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking
#118I've done a few quizzes on the app now, and I don't get it. The questions feel very contrived, like someone had a quota to fill so just put whatever looked plausible together. They are also _very_ culturally specific. Questions about eggs barely made sense to me being from the UK, with incorrect pack sizes, animal welfare terms, and completely missed our great standards body that makes it easy to know which eggs have…
Apologies if the wok explanation came across as insensitive or racist.
The wording used was 'a wok is unwieldy and uncommon in a lot of home kitchens'.
As one of the two Asian writers who this got past, we believed that this statement was true enough for North American beginners looking to learn how to make scrambled eggs.
I have changed the copy there and endeavour to make sure that we are more culturally sensitive in the future.
Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking
#119Please, please, please, avoid status cuisines . It's going to be hard to do, because they make good PR. But you will be helping your users a lot more of you hold them off with a ten foot pole. What do I mean by a status cuisine ? They are meals that are intended to show that the cook is a worthy person, rather than that the meal is practical, healthy, and good to eat. Here are some examples: The endurance cuisine: de…
> chop your own veg
Is there a way to avoid this? I can get some chopped vegetables at the grocery store, but the vast majority of vegetables are only available whole.
Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking
#120I've had very similar ideas, and although I can't quite get the vision of how you're organizing the material since your last pivot, I want to throw in a few ideas (that you may be already doing.) 1) Cooking skills are physical acts of dexterity and timing that can be explained and modeled by text and videos, but not mastered. This is a good place for the use of spaced repetition; every time someone makes a recipe tha…
> 1) Cooking skills are physical acts of dexterity and timing that can be explained and modeled by text and videos, but not mastered. Not sure I agree - I actually get a lot of value out of videos for cooking techniques and they can often nip bad habits in the bud. For instance, I recently discovered a new method for matchsticking carrots from a video that i really like.
I didn't mean to suggest that people don't learn from videos, I think they mostly learn from video, from Julia Childs to America's Test Kitchen to youtube. I was trying to say that you get good at something by trying to do it, not by watching the video over and over again.