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Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

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Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#271

Post by calvinmorrison »

EddySchauHai wrote: post #96
danpalmer wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To perhaps be a bit more constructive, and to suggest a way forward... I'd like to see a cooking teaching app that allows users to work through a recipe in varying levels of detail. For example, consider a Lasagna. A lower level recipe may use ricotta for a quick and easy version, a higher level might explain step by step how to make a bechamel, and the "hardest" level may just say "make a bechamel". As a user, being…

> I'd like to see a cooking teaching app that allows users to work through a recipe in varying levels of detail. For example, consider a Lasagna. A lower level recipe may use ricotta for a quick and easy version, a higher level might explain step by step how to make a bechamel, and the "hardest" level may just say "make a bechamel". Can you hear that noise? That's the noise of a million Italians crying. Because of yo…

Well, not to brag, but this is exactly how Julia Child did "the way to cook". First few episodes were all fundamentals like how to dice, chop and julienne vegetables, how to quarter a chicken, your mother sauces, how to cook an egg, and so forth. By the end she's doing full on delicious recipes. I highly recommend it, and gamifying that system to me, would be awesome. Go Parsnip

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#272

Post by colordrops »

hk__2 wrote: post #207
colordrops wrote: post #140

I really think an open source clobe of Duolingo would be really popular. People could upload and share courses similar to Anki.

> People could upload and share courses similar to Anki. If it’s not curated it can be a mess. Italki has a feature that lets people make their own language quiz and it’s like this: some quiz are great, a lot of them are average or repetitive, and some are bad/useless or even contain mistakes. Also, you don’t really need open-source to have a crowdsourced service (see: YouTube, HN, etc).

Doesn't have to be open source, but I certainly wouldn't contribute, and many others wouldn't as well.

Curation and/or rating is a layer that would be added on top, and I agree it would be necessary to make it useful.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#273

Post by arcticbull »

klipt wrote: post #240
arcticbull wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Quoted post unavailable.

I'm a male, and I cook far more than any of my friends - male or female. I've no problem with a "mother sauce" and in fact the thought never crossed my mind.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#274

Post by [deleted] »

themodelplumber wrote: post #258
drc500free wrote: post #253

Tried the cheeseburger recipe. Got the question: "The best indicator of freshness for ground beef is:" I chose "(B) Smell." Because, you know, that's the answer (though I'm not sure why I'm starting out with a food safety question). I got a snotty response that I wouldn't be able to smell things that are in a sealed package, and I should always go by the manufacturing date printed on the package. No. You're wrong. An…

There seems to be a bit of useful feedback in here, wrapped in quite a strangely emotional comment. Did you use the app for six hours straight and forget to hydrate or something? Or is there some other reason to make your message this intense, that I'm missing? Surely there's a way to get the same message across without so much hyperbole. It's just beef!

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#275

Post by astura »

bkandel wrote: post #119
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…

> 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.

Frozen veg usually come pre-chopped.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#276

Post by sumnuyungi »

drc500free wrote: post #253

Tried the cheeseburger recipe. Got the question: "The best indicator of freshness for ground beef is:" I chose "(B) Smell." Because, you know, that's the answer (though I'm not sure why I'm starting out with a food safety question). I got a snotty response that I wouldn't be able to smell things that are in a sealed package, and I should always go by the manufacturing date printed on the package. No. You're wrong. An…

This is such an HN comment: pedantic, emotional, arrogant, completely out of touch with reality.

> I got a snotty response that I wouldn't be able to smell things that are in a sealed package, and I should always go by the manufacturing date printed on the package. No. You're wrong. And you're wrong about food safety, which is really not good. You go by smell, sliminess, color. The printed date is a nice guide but NOT what anyone should be using for food safety.

Did you consider that meats are sealed in store and you cannot smell it before purchasing? Going by date is fine for most areas. I also don't understand how you can be upset over "overly-patronizing" instructions but also want the level of detail for inspecting meat to include texture/smell/appearance.

> Now I've completed the food safety and "do you know what lean meat is" quiz, and I immediately go into another quiz about buying cheese. It wants me to say which cheese is hard and how to store cheese. What does this have to do with cooking a cheeseburger? I gave up.

Ingredient preparation is a basic component of any recipe. Knowing how to store cheese has a pretty obvious relationship to cooking a cheeseburger.

> It seems like a knowledge graph the way you've done it is an anti-pattern of actual cooking. You're decomposing every recipe into its ingredients and then asking arbitrary questions about each one.

It seems like if you think cheese storage is arbitrary, you do not cook for yourself on a regular basis enough to think about ingredient storage/preparation.

> I don't think a framework of focusing on ingredients in a vacuum, having people get quizzes wrong, and calling them "Junior Chef" is the way to do it.

Knowing the ingredients you're working with is the basic foundation to cooking. I don't see how someone can try to make a "Duolingo for Cooking" without including foundations... it'd be like trying to teach Spanish without defining pronouns.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#277

Post by yieldcrv »

I love how the criticisms about this app are the same criticisms against Duolingo, which also has arbitrary choices that it tries to classically condition you with, while providing you no rhyme, reason, or context as to why a rule would be the way it is, something an actual class would do and to the benefit of people actually trying to learn something.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#278

Post by astura »

EddySchauHai wrote: post #195
tclancy wrote: post #192

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?

Mother sauces are "French cuisine 101", but not "cooking 101." A very large number of "regular" American home cooks have never made a Béchamel sauce.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#279

Post by TheDarkestSoul »

drc500free wrote: post #264
themodelplumber wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be a bit of useful feedback in here, wrapped in quite a strangely emotional comment. Did you use the app for six hours straight and forget to hydrate or something? Or is there some other reason to make your message this intense, that I'm missing? Surely there's a way to get the same message across without so much hyperbole. It's just beef!

Heh, I may be having a strong reaction to the overly-patronizing app. I'm surprised myself at how unpleasant I found it to use. Reading through this thread, others have also been rubbed the wrong way. The approach they're using is to tell you you're wrong over and over, but in a saccharine "that's okay squirt, you're doing your best!" kind of way. Like, here's another question: "What is the best way to store hard che…

The matter of opinion thing got me too. I felt like I had to guess what the writer's intention was with many of the questions instead of just answering them factually. I was clicking through the pasta quiz on "Spaghetti and Meatballs" and one of the questions is something like "True or false: Any pasta dish can be made with any kind of pasta."

...What? What does that mean? I mean, I guess it's called "Spaghetti and meatballs" and not "spaghetti and pasta" for a reason? Most dishes use specific pastas for their specific qualities with regards to how they absorb sauce and things like that. False?

"Wrong! You can make any pasta dish with any pasta! Just because the recipe calls for spaghetti doesn't mean you can't use fettuccine!"

Ok? What does this have to do with anything?

I'm imagining it being 6:30 and the user is already hungry and can't even open the recipe yet because he's working through these insane questions lol.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#280

Post by muzani »

I love this app! It's a little culturally/regionally specific (things like herbs and the types of tomatoes). But that's fine, hopefully this inspires people to do a similar app with thai curry, coconut milk, etc.

One of the reasons I cook is because it's possible to taste food you'd never taste before. I can't get a good halal spaghetti bolognese. Sure, there are restaurants, but they tend to be way overpriced for something that's an everyday recipe. I think it would be interesting to teach people about more exotic ingredients as well.

Also I've been cooking for decades, and even did a recipe startup. And yet I've learned a lot from the beginner tier alone. Big fan of this.

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