Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

parsnip.ai

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 377 posts

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#341

Post by traceroute66 »

vizzier wrote: post #176
traceroute66 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you hear that noise? That's the noise of a million Italians crying. Because of you. Learn to make 'mother sauces' straight away guys! They're simple and flavorful. I'm not Italian, but I'm willing to give the OP the benefit of the doubt in the following way: Have you ever read a professional cookbook ? I (would like to) think that what the OP was saying is that "hardest" level would equate to professional cookb…

Your comment reminds me of this[1] video from sorted food where they make a recipe from an old professional cookbook. Instructions are very high level and without the context of 100 years ago it is difficult to know if they were successful in their creation. More detail recipes or at least pictures alongside might have given some of that context. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nWoI923LnY

> Your comment reminds me of this[1] video from sorted food where they make a recipe from an old professional cookbook. Instructions are very high level

Yes, the modern equivalent book might be (for example) Practical Professional Cookery by Cracknell & Kaufmann. 928 pages of pure text. Not a single illustration or photo.

Its a fabulous reference book. But certainly not for the noob, it requires comfort both in the kitchen and the style of recipe presentation.

The recipes are not quite as extremely terse as those in the 100 year old book. The ingredients are presented with their weights. But the method descriptions remain short and to the point, basically bullet-point one or two phrase statements.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#342

Post by astura »

bearmode wrote: post #331
astura wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd say it definitely is cooking 101. They're the basis for a tremendous number of recipes over the last hundred years. Americans being ignorant isn't really an argument.

It's basis for a tremendous number of recipes in French cuisine, which is only one form of cooking.

If you are from Louisiana you'd think the Holy Trinity was cooking 101.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#343

Post by dannyhodge »

Not to undermine everybody else's feedback, because I 100% agree with what they said, but I started with the tomato bisque lessons, and the contents were much better. I found it genuinely interesting, and as a beginner home cook, I was learning things, such as stuff about acidity, different types of tomatoes etc. However, I still found it dragged out a bit, with too many random unhelpful questions (e.g. which of these is a tomato?). The app is very well designed in terms of the UX, and the only time I struggled was in getting back to the home page after a lesson. Feels like a third option at the bottom, or replacing the X icon with a home icon would be more intuitive.

My last suggestion is a big one, as it changes the app a bit, but why not start with the recipe? Others have mentioned the lack of a hook, and it gives something for the questions to refer to.

Good luck, I sincerely hope you're successful, there's an odd shortage of cooking apps.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#344

Post by bearmode »

astura wrote: post #342
bearmode wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it definitely is cooking 101. They're the basis for a tremendous number of recipes over the last hundred years. Americans being ignorant isn't really an argument.

It's basis for a tremendous number of recipes in French cuisine, which is only one form of cooking. If you are from Louisiana you'd think the Holy Trinity was cooking 101.

It's the basis for a tremendous number of recipes in all Western cuisine.

>If you are from Louisiana you'd think the Holy Trinity was cooking 101.

Yes, and you'd learn bases like soffritto/mirepoix/holy trinity as well. They are also a part of cooking 101.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#345

Post by tdhz77 »

mizzao wrote: post #307
tdhz77 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, as a first time user that’s what I didn’t understand. My impatience grew, and you were saved by the fact I didn’t want to lose my progress so I powered through. Annoyed, but somewhat satisfactory end experience. I’ll have to try the recipe to see the full benefits.

Thanks for the feedback, I'll think about how to address that. Did you realize that you could save your progress along the way and you didn't necessarily have to unlock the recipe?

Nope

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#346

Post by mizzao »

SergeAx wrote: post #328

One question: why not web app? I don't see anything that needs to be enclosed into proprietary Apple/Google ecosystem.

We actually tried building a PWA for a previous iteration of Parsnip and it was a terrible experience. You can still try it here: https://beta.parsnip.ai/

I don't think PWAs are ready for mass adoption yet... and they may never be, as they are trying to shoehorn an old technology into a new mode of interaction. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32276188.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#347

Post by bearmode »

Idea: start with the recipe, have the lessons based around explaining why the recipe contains certain ingredients, why they work together, how to prepare them (and why we're preparing them in that way). Would be much more informative than just seemingly random, often patronising trivia

And it would also fill a niche that no recipe site seems to fill right now. It's almost impossible to find a recipe that actually explains why you're doing everything, why this ingredient works, etc. Knowing why an ingredient works opens the doors to substitution and recipe modification by the 'student', which is a great pathway to learning. And it would be a hell of a lot more engaging.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#348

Post by blakesley »

TheDarkestSoul wrote: post #212
whateveracct wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think the language analogy is apt. Your statement that "cooking isn't that hard!" is similar to someone who speaks English fluently saying English isn't that hard. I fully defend OP's problem statement with the iceberg analogy.

Let's take your other comment: "just buy ingredients and follow a recipe". This makes no sense to me. Sure, I could just make the 10-20 guesses required to buy ingredients & get to the end of the recipe, it would probably result in something edible but bad. At that point, I'll have learned how to make it better next time, but not necessarily how to make it half-decent.

So, as OP describes elsewhere, whenever I'm trying to follow a new recipe, I end up looking up an average of 5 vids on prep or technique that I'm unsure about. It gets me something half-decent in the end, but it's a lot of work, and I never feel like I really "get it".

Also, your overall tone is so weird to me. You're talking about cooking like it has no fundamentals and it's just loosey-goosey & based on people's preferences, but there are DEFINITELY wrong ways to cook things, and lots of them. I learn more about those wrong ways every time I try cooking.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#349

Post by asoneth »

bearmode wrote: post #327
EddySchauHai wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do like Salt Fat Acid Heat too :) But I really didn't think this thread would go this way, it was clear to me OP knew his way around a kitchen and was from Europe so knew enough about Italian cooking stereotypes to understand the intended humor. Fwiw, you learn mother sauces after six weeks of knife skills at Auguste Escoffier in the US so you could definitely be right about 102 :)

Honestly I don't know how using the phrase 'mother sauces' is gatekeeping, I think it's just really basic cooking. Might not know the term, but an app trying to teach you to cook should absolutely be teaching it to you. A big part of learning a new skill is learning the vocabulary to navigate that skill. It's weird to shy away from it.

At least in my case I do not think cooking jargon like "mother sauces" is gatekeeping. These discussions are a great way to learn about new things and I appreciate when people share their knowledge.

The part that seemed like gatekeeping was the part where they asserted that "a million Italians [are] crying. Because of you" in response to a commenter describing different methods of making a lasagna that require varying levels of skill.

That seemed like an attempt at gatekeeping because it asserts that many people who are making a lasagna in any way besides their preferred method that relies on "mother sauces" is Wrong.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#350

Post by mattkrause »

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.

It might be intimidating for a second (it's got an accented vowel!), but the concept actually seems welcoming.

A lot of cooking is essentially variations on a theme. If you can make béchamel, you're now also only a step away from a bunch of other sauces (Mornay, Soubise, etc), simply by adding different ingredients. The technique for making béchamel is similar for espagnole and veloute, but with different liquids in the first step.

Extracting out this general principle is, for me, a thousand times more comprehensible than memorizing that (((butter + flour) + milk) + onions) -> soubise but (((butter + flour) + milk) + cheese) -> mornay.

Post reply on HN