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Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

parsnip.ai

241–250 of 377 posts

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

> Can you hear that noise? That's the noise of a million Italians crying. Because of you.

Is this cooking 101?

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - most of them are required for most food Most foods, or most traditional French cuisine? I've never even heard the term, despite cooking pretty decent food for decades.

Most Western foods! I mentioned in another thread that recently I started learning Creole cooking which starts with a dark roux followed by stopping the cooking process with the holy trinity. This is very similar to espagnole mother sauce and a modified mirepoix (peppers instead of carrots). If you take a cooking course in almost any Western country it'll start with traditional French and Italian methods as a lot of…

> If you take a cooking course in almost any Western country it'll start with traditional French and Italian methods as a lot of cooking styles evolved from that.

Weird, I've taken a couple cooking classes in the Bay Area, and this never came up.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#243
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…

This list of no-nos hilariously inverts the "shaming" you're trying to avoid: instead of feeling bad for using shortcuts, now I'm supposed to feel bad for not using them?

I chop onions instead of buying them pre-chopped (is this even a thing?) and you see that as some sort of expression of snobbery or a status signalling behaviour? I can't help but laugh here.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#244

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."

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…

Saying that béchamel is a fundamental thing you need to learn is quite specific to a range of European recipes and traditions. You can make lots of fantastic things, from scratch, even involving Italian food, without any mother sauces.

I would argue that the real fundamental things for basic cooking are more like how to use a knife, how to sauté things, what happens to different veggies, meats, and herbs as they cook for various times and temperatures, etc.

As for the mother sauces, they’re prepared ingredients that one might make at home to use in various recipes. There are plenty of other examples: stocks, various things that can be made out of eggs, various Asian sauces, hot sauces, various cooked garlic preparations, sofrito, etc. Béchamel is just one example.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#245
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…

> 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.

> Is there a way to avoid this?

Is there a reason to avoid this? GP commenter's list of "status" cuisines (including "chopping vegetables" as a status symbol) is just nonsense, you should not expend too much energy trying to interpret it.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's not cooking 101, it's at least cooking 102 or 103. I know you didn't do it intentionally, but when newbies get into a new subject they are often turned off by comments like yours which boil down to "oh noo you can't do it that way, you simply must do insert term of art or else insert negative hyperbole " - it's precisely what's meant by "gatekeeping". If I told my girlfriend a million Italians were crying becaus…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#247
post #86
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recipes cant be copyrighted, so bloggers write long-form narratives ahead of the recipe to make the contents of the page intellectual property.

a substantial number of people (not me) do enjoy reading the stories, they get something out of it, damn normies.

Me too, but not when I'm in a rush, but the JS is flashing off and on, moving things around the page, and generally making for a miserable experience.

Maybe they could just put it after the recipe???

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#248

FYI, when I sign up with the form at the bottom, the "Thank you! Your submission has been received!" message appears under the white parsnip SVG (`.footer-snippy`) and obscures some of the text. Observed on Firefox v102. Otherwise, this looks really cool!

Thanks for pointing this out! We really appreciate this kind of valuable feedback. We hope you enjoying playing the levels and look forward to having any suggestions from you!

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#249
Sorry, it seems like a whole lessons section is missing from the app. The only way someone can learn currently is by guessing all of the quiz sections.

First question received: "The best indicator of freshness for ground beef is: a) smell, b) whether it was frozen, c) the manufacture date, d) color.

The answer "a" smell was marked incorrect, "c" manufacture date was the "correct one". Uh... maybe... unless it wasn't stored properly.

Other questions: Is all ground beef the same? How long can fresh ground beef can be kept in the refrigerator for?

It really isn't helpful to guess my way through some quizzes to get access to a recipe.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#250
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't mean to come off rude but your app comes off like it's aimed at people who are almost literally afraid and bewildered by the sight of a pan or stove or avocado like the apes in 2001 coming across the monolith. With people I know who don't cook it's usually due to wanting to avoid the hassle they think exists because of misconceptions about the difficulty or time it takes. I'm not sure there are that many peop…

Exactly. I have never met anyone in my life with the fear they are describing in learning to cook. Is there a person on earth actually afraid of the "literal fire on their stove"? I don't think an app is going to solve that problem.
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