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Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

parsnip.ai

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Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#211

Post by dkarl »

ajb wrote: post #105

Please, 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 have a different take. Cooking for status is a gateway to cooking for other reasons, kind of like how people start working out to look hot and then stick with it for the other benefits.

Also, when you start out, it inevitably feels like a big complicated formal deal anyway, no matter what you're cooking, so why not actually make coq au vin or beef Wellington or something super cool like that? Julia Child's classic beginner's cookbook The Way to Cook paired classic French recipes with "home cooking" versions of the same recipes, and as a twenty-something with virtually no cooking skill, I found the classic versions much more motivating than the home cooking versions. When I got excited by Thai cooking, I made my own curry paste, something I would never bother with now. Some beginners are full of energy and enthusiasm for big challenges, and it would be great to have resources for them, even if other beginners should be steered to different resources according to their goals and motivations.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#212

Post by TheDarkestSoul »

whateveracct wrote: post #160
danpalmer wrote: post #84

I'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…

Cooking has become a very weird thing - people both overrate its difficulty and complexity to the point of phobia..and also consume content of people cooking without ever doing it themselves. So many cooking tik tok etcs are so obviously not good food to make compared to normal stuff. Scrambled eggs are a good thing to learn for a beginner, and maybe the app does try to teach you the real "hard" part of them: Heat co…

> Cooking has become a very weird thing - people both overrate its difficulty and complexity to the point of phobia

This is very astute and I think things like this app are probably actually counterproductive for this reason--if we imply learning to cook is comparable to learning a _language_ in its complexity you're only going to make people more wary. Really all you need to do is buy ingredients and follow a recipe; now you're cooking! It isn't that hard.

As you say, the real learning process of cooking involves making things, getting a sense for what works, what you like, and iterating, and you can't really get this from an app, or videos, or whatever.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#213

Post by codyb »

dathanb82 wrote: post #37
dangerlibrary wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=how%20to... It was fun, actually

No surprise here: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=how%20to...

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=how%20to...

Learning to cook and searches for poop seem highly correlated

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#214

Post by slingnow »

mizzao wrote: post #168
Mikeb85 wrote: post #163

I wish you good luck but I don't get it either. The thing that makes Duolingo great is that right away you learn words in a new language. It hooks you. Within 1 lesson you know several words or a phrase with a few variations. This is more just random trivia about food that no one cares about. I started with the cheeseburger recipe (apparently an advanced lesson or something). Right away it's asking me a bunch of ques…

The goal we're building toward is that you can pick any recipe on the Internet and learn it in this way. But first we have to start with a small group (beginners) and make sure it's actually fun and interesting for them. I explain how this works at https://parsnip.substack.com/p/a-new-hope The unintuitive observation for beginners is that their pain doesn't seem to be cooking the food and making the recipe. It's "I d…

So if someone came to you asking you to teach them to make a cheeseburger, you would "build their confidence" by quizzing them on trivia about ground beef? And that this will somehow translate into not being "intimidated by the literal fire on their stove"?

I'm more confused about this app now than when I started.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#215

Post by arcticbull »

tclancy wrote: post #192
EddySchauHai wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really isn't gatekeeping! But if you're learning to cook there are fundamental things you need to learn. This is like the simplest sentences of learning a new language on Duolingo here, it's not some crazy term. Literally week 1 in many cooking schools, maybe week 2 after stocks. If you're trying to teach people cooking, you want to be taught the fundamental key steps to follow recipes no? How many start with bu…

Mother sauces is absolutely gatekeeping. You can get pretty far, and even know how to turn a roux into a béchamel without ever knowing it’s a mother sauce or that there are others.

"Mother sauces" is not gatekeeping lol, its an industry term. It's no more gatekeeping than "data structure."

I don't understand at all, honestly - I see a term I don't know, I grab the googs and figure it out. My first reaction isn't to accuse the person who knows something I don't of gatekeeping.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#216

Post by arcticbull »

acaloiar wrote: post #204
EddySchauHai wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about a course on cooking here, how is it gatekeeping to talk about cooking 101 subjects?

For what it's worth, you're the only one talking about a cooking course in this thread.

I wish more were! That's what I was hoping parsnip.ai was. I was really excited actually.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#217

Post by dragonwriter »

Kiro wrote: post #209
mizzao wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My co-founder handled the privacy policy so I've pinged him to provide a response. We'll get back to you as soon as possible! EDIT : lynndotpy was right; it's required by law under COPPA if we have users under 13. It's the same reason that sites ask people for their age/birthday to check if they're under 13. We want kids to be able to learn to cook too!

Still don't understand the "Your child" part. Does COPPA require the parent to sign up on behalf of their kid or something?

Yes, COPPA and the implementing regs require parental notice and affirmative consent: see 16 CFR Part 312, particularly §§ 312.4, 312.5

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-16/chapter-I/subchapter-C...

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#218

Post by breadchris »

TL;DR ive been consolidating my cooking knowledge in an open source recipe site https://github.com/cookwherever/cookwherever

Hey! I am excited to see people developing in this space since this is where my head is also at. Up until two years ago I was eating canned chili and soylent before I was shown the light with The Food Lab and Salt, Fat, Acid and Heat. Ever since I have been trying to share my knowledge on cooking with others with varying levels of success.

What has become clear to me is that there is no one size fits all approach to teaching cooking since it is usually a very cultural experience for most people (as many in the comments have pointed out). That said, SFAH makes the argument that most cuisines are much closer than people think when you consider the functional properties of the ingredients that you are cooking. Pizza is just pasta with yeast *Italian grandmothers slowly turn their heads towards this atrocity*

All of this to say, I believe recipes are critical to jump start the creative process of cooking. When any type of possible failure on the path to completion is experienced (ex. missing ingredient, burnt cookies, etc.) there MUST be some way of recovering or at the very least understanding how that happened.

I have been slowing taking notes on all the cooking knowledge I have come across and have been putting it along side the recipes that inspire me. Forcing learning on someone in the kitchen, who is already probably pretty hungry if cooking is seen as a chore, is not productive. Sharing the joy you get from the art that is cooking is IMPERATIVE for any type of educational resource.

If you are interested in my progress, or want to contribute go check it out! https://github.com/cookwherever/cookwherever

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#219

Post by WebbWeaver »

klodolph wrote: post #181
asoneth wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only do I not know how to make a bechamel, this is the first time I've heard this word or the expression "mother sauces". (Maybe because I'm only a quarter Italian?) If we're going to gatekeep cooking behind a lot of prior knowledge perhaps it would be even more efficient to reduce the lasagna recipe to a single sentence: "Make a lasagna."

You can write programs and never know what an algorithm is. That’s roughly the equivalent. Someone with formal training in cooking will know the mother sauces, almost certainly, just like someone with formal training in CS will almost certainly know big-O notation. If you want to learn this stuff, there textbooks on cooking. Not quite the same thing as a cookbook!

Fair. Just follow https://www.reddit.com/r/GifRecipes/ for recipes so you dont have to think.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#220

Post by dsr_ »

EddySchauHai wrote: post #193
admax88qqq wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A beginner cooking course of a specific cuisine. Believe it or not there are tons more cuisines out there besides French all their their own prior knowledge, staples, customs, sauces etc.

Okay I concede this is Western, yes. But they're used all over, even if they get slightly adapted over time to the local area. I was learning Creole cooking the other month making a gumbo and it starts very similar to the espagnole mother sauce (a dark roux) with a modified sofrito (red peppers instead of carrots). And also, if you look at the best cooking schools in the US such as Auguste Escoffier they also start w…

They are core essentials for the Western cooking tradition codified by Escoffier. The Indic tradition is different (and North India is quite different from South). There are at least four major groups of African traditions. I am being profoundly ignorant by referring to the Asian tradition - Northern Chinese is wheat-centered and Southern is rice-centered, and Thai flavors are quire different from Viet not to mention Malay...z

And none of them use the mother sauces except the Western tradition.

Humans have great diversity in food, and that is wonderful.

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