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Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

parsnip.ai

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Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#361

Post by dang »

sumnuyungi wrote: post #276
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 NO…

"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse threads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#362

Post by arcticbull »

mizzao wrote: post #293
arcticbull wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

OP here. a16z has a thesis that education will go from 1. teaching in a class and taking a test, to 2. teaching in online videos and taking an online test, to 3. modular, choose your own adventure, at your own pace, software-supplemented, continual learning: https://a16z.com/2020/10/16/next-gen-edtech/ That's what we're trying to do with cooking. If we succeed, it's going to be essentially replicating an apprenticesh…

Can't wait! I cook pretty often and I'd love to up my game and work towards some more fine dining type dishes. I'd pay for an app that did that.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#363

Post by samstave »

dkarl wrote: post #211
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…

My grandmother was friends with both Julia Child and Martin Yan, She traveled to China several times with Yan on these cooking tours he would arrange.

When my grandmother was teaching me how to cook, what was wonderful was the non-nonchalant way she could subtly be specific...

Meaning, when she was teaching me a recipe, she would tell me "oh just however much you feel is right" but at the same time giving me subtle indicators as to what was appropriate amount.

It took the stress out of cooking, but also let me feel the bumpers to make a strike.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#364

Post by SergeAx »

mizzao wrote: post #346
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 .

Thank you for the link! I briefly skimmed the content and my experience was quite normal for website. Maybe load time was suboptimal couple of times, but it should be improved by CDN. It is much easier to just click the link and get to the the content momentarily, without the need to download and install app (thinking in process: is it too big? Why it should be that big?) and occasional "login with X" stage. It could even be a classic website, without PWA, using server-side rendering (good for search engines too, giving you free organic traffic).

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#365

Post by tdeck »

tdeck wrote: post #134
mizzao wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ins…

I'm curious if you've actually interviewed users who can't identify a friend vs scrambled egg and how much of this demographic exists. That example seems like something you'd learn from simply ordering breakfast a couple of times.

Apparently my phone chose "friend" rather than "fried" but hopefully that was pretty clear.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#366

Post by solarmist »

asoneth wrote: post #349
bearmode wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 varyin…

Yes, that WAS the joke. The easy recipe isn’t “real” Italian food. Italian people are often very prideful about their cuisine.

Someone could also claim the opposite that the “easy” version is cultural appropriation.

Jokes are hard nowadays.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#367

Post by defterGoose »

junon wrote: post #262
mizzao wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We actually think recipes are mostly unimportant, but teaching the underlying principles are what's important. Measurements are more important for pastries but less important for stovetop/oven cooking. The recipes we have right now are pretty easy for any English speaker to use. Our main content creator is from Australia, lives in Canada, and makes fun of the Imperial system all the time :)

American living in Germany. The thing you're not understanding is that "use roughly an ounce or so" will mean nothing to anyone in Europe. It's not about "recipes aren't important" but speaking the language of people who use your app. Locality is just as important.

I mean honestly though, if your problem is not being able to figure out unit conversions with a smartphone in your hand you might be putting the cart before the horse trying to learn how to cook well.

Learning to "eyeball things" is actually one of the most important skills I think you can have in the kitchen (not for baking of course), but when I see that I need 200g of an ingredient for a recipe, my first thought isn't "I can't believe the person writing this is from Europe!"

OTOH, it would literally take a few lines of code for the app to have conversions ready to go for you.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#368

Post by junon »

defterGoose wrote: post #367
junon wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American living in Germany. The thing you're not understanding is that "use roughly an ounce or so" will mean nothing to anyone in Europe. It's not about "recipes aren't important" but speaking the language of people who use your app. Locality is just as important.

I mean honestly though, if your problem is not being able to figure out unit conversions with a smartphone in your hand you might be putting the cart before the horse trying to learn how to cook well. Learning to "eyeball things" is actually one of the most important skills I think you can have in the kitchen (not for baking of course), but when I see that I need 200g of an ingredient for a recipe, my first thought i…

... but my hands are full, messy, or contaminated when I'm cooking, and your condescending arguing point kind of flies out the window at that point.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#369

Post by asoneth »

solarmist wrote: post #366
asoneth wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 varyin…

Yes, that WAS the joke. The easy recipe isn’t “real” Italian food. Italian people are often very prideful about their cuisine. Someone could also claim the opposite that the “easy” version is cultural appropriation. Jokes are hard nowadays.

It's true, jokes are hard. I've come to the conclusion that it's simpler to take jokes in discussions like these at face value. Sometimes statements seem to be framed as jokes as much for plausible deniability as humor. And as Gilda Radner says: "Humor is the truth, only faster!"

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#370

Post by no_circuit »

mizzao wrote: post #300
no_circuit wrote: post #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…

The wisdom from Duolingo is that 90% of users didn't care about lessons but 10% really wanted them. So out of the Pareto principle, we skipped the lessons for the MVP. Definitely plan to add them in later.

People may enjoy guessing during quizzes on Duolingo because they either have the capability of guessing because they know another similar language for example. But cooking is like an art and a science. A random fact like how long ground beef takes to spoil has no relation to how long you need to cook ground beef and to what temperature according to the food safety guidelines of the country in which one currently resides.

I assume I'm like the other commenters that love cooking, but are trying to find a nice way of saying that guessing food trivia doesn't seem fun.

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