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Thinking about recipe formats more than anyone should

rknight.me

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Re: Thinking about recipe formats more than anyone should

#21

Post by numlocked »

ahnick wrote: post #13
numlocked wrote: post #9

Many years ago I experimented with making recipes into Gantt charts. For more complex recipes this proved incredibly useful. I spent some time trying to automate turning some of the recipe formats into Gantts, but it was pretty cumbersome. I'll bet a good LLM would make this achievable now. For an example, here's a gantt chart for Beef Bourguignon: https://ibb.co/c3TVTnX Note that when I print it on a (physical) reci…

Reminds me of the cookingforengineers.com format to some degree. Here's an example. You'll need to scroll down to see the actual recipe format. https://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/194/Cream-of-Mush...

After reading another comment here about a recipe being an “upside down tree” I now understand what at least this format is trying to accomplish.

It has some really nice properties, but trades off a key feature of the gantt format: your hands can only be doing one thing at a time. With the gantt format it’s very clear what you are supposed to be doing at any time and it preserves the order of operations. It doesn’t express how things are combined, however, which the tree format accomplishes.

My motivation for the gantt format was to prevent getting “meanwhiled” by a recipe. You are chugging along, and think you are in good shape, and come across that dastardly word in a recipe: Meanwhile. Turns out you should have beaten the eggs to a stiff whip 15 minutes ago.

Re: Thinking about recipe formats more than anyone should

#22

Post by ahnick »

numlocked wrote: post #16
ahnick wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the cookingforengineers.com format to some degree. Here's an example. You'll need to scroll down to see the actual recipe format. https://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/194/Cream-of-Mush...

Hmm interesting. But I have to confess I have no idea, intuitively, how to read that format. I’m sure it works once you understand it, but if you need an instruction manual for the format then maybe you’ve lost the plot a bit.

It reads left to right, top to bottom. Ingredients are on the left and then each step boxes around the items involved in that step.

Using the mushroom soup recipe as an example:

(1) Melt the butter.

(2) Wash and dice the onions, celery, and leeks.

(3) Sweat the melted butter from step (1) and the diced onions, celery, and leeks from step (2) together for 6 minutes.

Re: Thinking about recipe formats more than anyone should

#23

Post by chuckl »

pickledish wrote: post #17
chuckl wrote: post #15

Just finished my own overthinking of recipe structures. I figure that a recipe is more or less an upside-down tree! Where you start with a list of all the nodes (ingredients) Have a n:1 relationship with the next series of nodes (steps) until you finish at a single node (the dish you're trying to make) So instead of having a separate chunk of "here's my ingredients" and "let me repeat the ingredients and one by one i…

Ha, your example makes intuitive sense right when you see it. Really clever thanks for sharing it!

thanks for checking it out!

Re: Thinking about recipe formats more than anyone should

#24

Post by bilalq »

numlocked wrote: post #9

Many years ago I experimented with making recipes into Gantt charts. For more complex recipes this proved incredibly useful. I spent some time trying to automate turning some of the recipe formats into Gantts, but it was pretty cumbersome. I'll bet a good LLM would make this achievable now. For an example, here's a gantt chart for Beef Bourguignon: https://ibb.co/c3TVTnX Note that when I print it on a (physical) reci…

Oh, I really like the idea of using Gantt charts for meals. If you're trying to serve a bunch of hot dishes at the same time in the end and are constrained in terms of keep warm/crispy/moist options, starting/stopping things at the right time can be critical.

Re: Thinking about recipe formats more than anyone should

#25

Post by nicbou »

chuckl wrote: post #15

Just finished my own overthinking of recipe structures. I figure that a recipe is more or less an upside-down tree! Where you start with a list of all the nodes (ingredients) Have a n:1 relationship with the next series of nodes (steps) until you finish at a single node (the dish you're trying to make) So instead of having a separate chunk of "here's my ingredients" and "let me repeat the ingredients and one by one i…

What if the same ingredient is used twice in a recipe, for example for cooking and finishing?

Re: Thinking about recipe formats more than anyone should

#27

Post by adt2bt »

chuckl wrote: post #15

Just finished my own overthinking of recipe structures. I figure that a recipe is more or less an upside-down tree! Where you start with a list of all the nodes (ingredients) Have a n:1 relationship with the next series of nodes (steps) until you finish at a single node (the dish you're trying to make) So instead of having a separate chunk of "here's my ingredients" and "let me repeat the ingredients and one by one i…

Interesting. Also allows for some fun ‘expansion’ in recipes. A leaf node may be ‘chicken stock’ but you could link to a recipe that boils down to that one ‘chicken stock’ node if you want to DIY it.

Re: Thinking about recipe formats more than anyone should

#28

Post by 1propionyl »

The replies to this post are, unfortunately, very indicative of the negative side of the "(pseudo-)engineering mindset", which is rather close to the model-constructing mindset inherited from economics (reductionism, hiding any variety incurred by real world complexity, etc).

I don't see very many people here who seem to really have done a lot of cooking, consider it a serious hobby or profession, etc.

None of these proposals pass the smell test as being able to capture anything beyond the most basic of recipes.

Re: Thinking about recipe formats more than anyone should

#29

Post by LarryMade2 »

This is something I get (better ways at storing and using information.

I like the of a list of ingredients with the quantity in the top and then repeated in the steps (if no quantity is mentioned in the steps its implied the whole ingredient is used). This makes sense in that you may need to have on hand 3 tbs of butter but 2 get melted and mixed in step 3, and 1 is used to grease the pan in step 5.

The next dimension would be a language/glossary of preparation terms (slice apple - how? radially or into x thickness sheets?) This would be helpful for those without any clue on common actions and maybe later for automation. Though cooking is way more an art than just a set of steps and standard unit quantities.

With a glossary you could search for recipes that use grated apples or recipes that use a food processor, or don't use an oven, etc.

Good "food for thought" :-D

Re: Thinking about recipe formats more than anyone should

#30

Post by chuckl »

nicbou wrote: post #25
chuckl wrote: post #15

Just finished my own overthinking of recipe structures. I figure that a recipe is more or less an upside-down tree! Where you start with a list of all the nodes (ingredients) Have a n:1 relationship with the next series of nodes (steps) until you finish at a single node (the dish you're trying to make) So instead of having a separate chunk of "here's my ingredients" and "let me repeat the ingredients and one by one i…

What if the same ingredient is used twice in a recipe, for example for cooking and finishing?

I think of them as 2 different nodes, 2 instances of the same type of ingredient.

Practically I just have it listed twice if it's important like butter.

https://cookbook.cstebbins.com/recipe/the-best-swedish-meatb...

otherwise if it's a staple like salt I just say something like "stir in and season with additional salt and pepper to taste"

like in https://cookbook.cstebbins.com/recipe/sloppy-sophisto-joes

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