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Cooking with the Internet?
VonGuard asks: "Not all of you live on ramen and coffee. At some point, you have to cook, and the Internet should be a great place to find recipes. Is there a Google for recipes. And why isn't there a larger open cookbook on the net? So, is anyone working on this, or is there something the rest of us don't know about yet?"
I'd try Allrecipes.com. I've gotten some good recipes from there.
You mentioned Google, so why not use it?
Here is the first result, just to get you started : Allrecipes index of 23,000 recipes.
Is there a Google for recipes
I like to use Food Network. I have found quite a few useful recipes there (one of my favorite was when I cooked for my gf's brother-in-law who is a vegetarian... Portabellas with spinach salad in an eggplant dressing.)
And why isn't there a larger open cookbook on the net?
I once heard a story of a woman that was eating a dessert at a restaurant and thought it was so
incredible that she just HAD to have the recipe. She asked the Chef and he at first declined but
after her continued insistance a typed sheet was delivered to the woman's table that included the
recipe and the bill. She read through the recipe and was delighted. She looked at the bill and
it was well over $500. She became infuriated and asked to see the Chef. He explained that her
bill was $100 and the cost of the receipe was $400.
Perhaps that's why,
Oh, come on now. Recipes were one of the first things I ever saw posted on the Internet even back when it was Arpanet. In fact, one of the reasons Xerox PARC gave for developing the GUI was to allow everyone to interact with a computer, even "kitchen wives" could be able to easily store and retrieve recipes on a computer without having to use "arcane" symbology.
To answer your question though, I think this link should be more than Slashdot worthy. The show is great, sufficiently geeky, and life is simply too short not to eat.....Good Eats.
There are many, many other links to recipes on the Internet. Food Network is one and Epicurious are the other principle resources I use.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Seriously though, try all recipes if you want something a little less generic.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
What would really be great is an Internet Cook Book Database. Set up to model after IMDB of course.
This cookbook has been a tecchie staple for years!
I'm not sure a central repository is all that necessary. It's relatively easy to find five variations on whatever I want to cook, from which I can place a pretty educated guess as to which recipe I would rather use. (Based on ingredients, obvious "convenience substitutions", etc.) It's really a fascinating practice: looking at five different recipes, seeing their similarities and differences, learning the central core theme to the composition, and seeing where different cooks have developed their own riffs.
(I guess I'm saying that if you want a large collection of standard recipes, go buy your requisite copy of the Joy of Cooking. Otherwise, embrace heterogeneity.)
I really haven't explained why a central Google/Open/Wiki cookbook would work against this. I just think that once people saw a recipe had been submitted, they would be less inclined to upload their slightly different version. Maybe such a global project would benefit by somehow encouraging the submission of many varieties, including a "moderation system" by which culinary enthusiasts might edit the variations-on-a-theme and even write editorials on how and why the variations exist, which provide useful time-saving substitutions, when a certain ingredient of method is really necessary to make the "Real McCoy", etc.
Another thing worth mentioning: there are already dozens of "cooking sites" that provide this service, most of them are very "open" allowing easy submission and access. I think a big Open Initiative is successful when there AREN'T pre-existing sites providing a service, or when the sites try to restrict access by forcing a paid subscription model. (Like Wikipedia to online Encyclopedias.) The addition of some generic Open cooking site would become "just another cooking site".
A funny side-note. I've benefitted by the LACK of such a central source. I have a website that I've been cultivating for under a year, where I've put creative (written, artistic, photographic, computing, etc.) works. I've done everything possible to cultivate this site so that visitors would come to it. The thing that brings the most visitors to my site? My "Basic Crepe Recipe". For some funny reason nobody else in the world has a higher Google-ranked Basic Crepe Recipe. (Okay, recently I got knocked down to #2.) So this little "afterthought" has become a leading constant influx of visitors.
Murray Todd Williams
I only ever get as far as the Nigella Lawson pictures...
*sigh*
No such thing as too many cooks spoil the broth, I think. A wiki would be the perfect solution for this, as long as the interest is there.
:-). it's easier that way when you screw up, and is a whole lot easier than when you're partnered later!.
I'm thankful I learned how to cook and cook well when I was younger, but there is ALWAYS something to learn from someone else. It's not some exact science or mysterious voodoo, just something anyone with a little creativity and some basic knowledge can build on.
PS. Experiment most when you're single
Classic Celebrity Desktops & Movie Posters
As you all know there are millions of recipes out there, but try finding one single recipe for a decent curry, the kind you can get at your favorite indian restaurant, and I bet you can't.
Sure, most come close, but even playing indian new age music while sitting down to eat your creation just doesn't cut it!
So what's the secret?
You just don't see enough recipes along these lines.
Anyone tried this "cream of somyungai" that I keep hearing so much about?
True story.
I usually to reverse engineer (or hack) my food. And Just like any opensource software sometimes the hacked food is compatible with my stomach and sometimes it is not :(
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Ingredients:
Vodka (chilled)
Dry Vermouth (chilled)
Olives
Olive Juice
Martini Glass
Mixing
1. Add as much Vodka as you'd like to drink
2. Splash in some vermouth to taste
3. Splash in some olive juice, until you can't taste the vermouth anymore
4. Add an olive or two
5. Drink!
Optional Extras
1. If the ingredients are not already cold, you may pre-mix in a shaker full of ice, and then strain the liquid into your martini glass. Ice may be used directly if you don't mind diluting the vodka.
2. Vodka mixes well with everything. Try additional ingredients to make new and unique martinis.
...there's always Epicurious.
I've found many a tasty recipe on there, but then, I love cooking and don't mind buying some wacky ingredients or spending extra time whipping something up.
I'm surprised that I haven't seen the Wikibooks-Cookbook at http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
The BBC has a very good food section that, in addition to having info on cooking shows and celebrity chefs, allows you to search its extensive collection of recipes - both from shows and submitted by readers. Also, they publish a magazine called Good Food from which (no doubt) many of these recipes are taken.
John
-- "...I'm a bad guy because I, well, I sing some rock-and-roll songs." M. Manson
Or, The Archive Formerly Known As SOAR.
http://www.recipesource.com/
I recommend the apple roast hadrosaur.
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
The Ars Technica batchelor chow cookbook.
Epicurious is, by far, the best site for recipes on the web. The best feature is its archive of recipes from a variety of publications going back many years.
That's a standard Urban Legend, though it's more often a cookie recipe. Check out Snopes for the details.
And for those disinclined to click links, a summary:
This site only has a few recipies, but it is great for a laugh. It is kind of like a cartoon version of Good Eats from FoodTV, but with a more warped sense of humor. It is the only cooking show hosted by an appetizer.
www.8legged.com
No-one has said it yet so...
1) Make an open-source cookbook
2) ???
3) Profit!
A friend of mine has put up a brilliant homepage about how to cook with your kitchen invaded. That is, invaded by other students who use the same kitchen. :) Great!
I came up with this tag first!
/fredu
Recipes can't be patented, and the data of a list of ingredients and a procedure can't be copyrighted.
That means that if someone wrote a proper web-crawling recipe snarfer that stored the recipes in a database (without stealing the formatting or stealing a particular collection), it should be intellectual property free and fully public domain!
Definitely a good weekend hacker challenge....
Braddock Gaskill
Ingredients:
Vodka (chilled)
Dry Vermouth (chilled)
Flashlight.
Martini Glass.
Olive.
Toothpick or Skewer.
Step 1: Pour Vodka into Martini Glass.
Step 2: Place Bottle of Vermouth in front of Martini Glass.
Step 3: Shine flashlight through Vermouth towards Martini glass.
Step 4: Put away flashlight and Vermouth bottle.
Step 5: Skewer Olive. Place in glass.
Done! =)
http://www.researchbuzz.org/archives/001404.shtml
Dude, where's my packet?
I've used UCBerkeley's Searchable Online Archive of Recipes for years. Its biggest shortcoming is a lack of ingredient searches, but they've integrated Google into the search for full text search, which is good enough, if a bit clumsy.
Here's the skinny from their About Us page:
While RecipeSource may be one of the newest recipe sites on the Internet, we're also one of the oldest. Our collection was started in 1993 by Jennifer Snider when she discovered the wonders of Usenet newsgroups & Internet mailing lists as a student at the University of California at Berkeley. She started saving recipes posted to those sources and soon amassed thousands of recipes. When her friends found out about the collection, we encouraged her to put them on the web, and she agreed, provided we helped her. After several months of hard work, the recipes first appeared on the web in 1995 as SOAR: The Searchable Online Archive of Recipes. From our start with around 10,000 recipes we've grown the collection to 7 times that size, and had our pages accessed millions of times from around the world. Thanks to our popularity, we've outgrown our original home, so we've moved the collection here to RecipeSource.com, where we hope it will continue to grow, while providing better response time and a better search engine than our old site.
I find Carnegie Mellon's Online Recipe Archive to be a wonderful resource.
I just started working on my own recipe database program. I started with a perl/mysql/cgi interface and now I'm working on a qt program to interface said database.
r ecipezaar.com// /www.foodtv.com/
Granted all my recipes are family recipes and it's nowhere near ready for mass consumption but there are recipes everywhere. allrecipes.com has already been mentioned but there are some other good sites:
http://www.recipesource.com/
http://www.
http://eat.epicurious.com/
http:
Of course if you are looking for something google can be your best resource.
Hopefully I will eventually have something that I feel is good enough to release. While I am using mysql, since I am using dbi (for the perl end) and qt for the c++ end it should be able to use any database that these support with just a recompile. Let me know if there is really an interest in this and I could try and release something soon. I'd give my web site but it's on my cablemodem which I'm not supposed to run a server off of.
.. is a Google API and here's how it works:
Drop $15 bucks on a copy of The New Basics Cookbook (including how to equip your kitchen, cooking glossary etc.) Browse through it. Drool. Pick one of its wonderful recipes. Unplug. Put on your favorite CD, loud.
Then spend an hour in the kitchen indulging your programmer process-queen, only this time you're rewarding your senses instead of your mind. For geeks who've never cooked, I promise you it can be a revelation. It's like coding - you plan, assemble, research, learn, follow instructions, improvise, iterate, performance-tune, test, and launch. Only "launch" = "eat something so delicious you'd never believe you were capable of making it yourself".
That's great unless you have more specific requirements. Say for example you're allergic to onions. You want all chili recipes without onions. There are a large number of ways a fully interactive cookbook would be beneficial. Hell categories better than "BEEF RECIPE" would be nice.
I always liked S.O.A.R. (searchable online archive of recipes) but they've seen changed to recipe source im pretty sure they use to be the largest, and part of berkley.edu
anyway, they still have a large collection of pretty good recipes
Food Network...Food TV Something like 25,000 recipes. I've tried a few of them, really nice.
-Vic
Here's the summary of these links below:
http://www.cookbook.com/
http://www.allrecipes.com/
http://www.foodnetwork.com/
http://eat.epicurious.com/
http://recipedelights.com/index6271m.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/
http://www.recipesource.com/
http://www.meals.com/Index/Index.aspx?Theme=0
http://www.altonbrown.com/
BTW I did this for me so I can look them up easier! Thanks for the links everyone.
A bit of a plug here, but still a good resource nonetheless...
Ars Bachelor Chow!: It's a 50+ page book chock full of great (and a few not-so-great) recipes for geek bachelors. Hey, it's probably better than the bachelor chow advertised on Futurama... ^_^
Argh... the link got eaten. Here it is: Orkut Cajun Food wiki.
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
to read all the comments. Did anybody suggest this?
What?
Victorian classics:
Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management
Moxon's English Housewifery Exemplified
Two interesting early vegetarian cook-books:
The Healthy Life Cook-Book
The Reform Cookery Book
Of historical interest:
The Form Of Cury -- in Middle English.
This is just a sample -- there are many more (search Gutenberg.net for 'cook' or 'cookery').
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
"What's for dinner?": you tell it what ingredients you have, what ingredients to exclude, and it'll tell you what you can make. Handy if you're trying to cook something with what you have and don't have time to go to the store or somesuch.
My wife started a French cooking website with about 70 recipes on it already, all of which she has written herself based on her experiences growing up in France and living in the south pacific.
It's a blast if you're throwing a quick party... a little messy though.
1. Place pan directly on CPU.
2. Place article about SCO on hard drive.
3. Post URL of article to Slashdot
4. Let cook for 15-20 minutes
5. Serve and eat!
*Use article about Gnome vs. KDE for higher altitudes
Alexandre PUKALL published a free list of more than 10 thousand recipes about a decade ago. It's available in various forms on the Net. My take on it is an easy to search windows help file (.chm) (use xchm in Linux), but take it easy with my server as it's 7Mb (and it's all in French).
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Try Google Recipe Search, it has Amazingly Powerful Parameters!
I just use Google Groups to rec.food.recipes when I'm looking for something different. It's turned up many good recipes, and my wife rates it A+!
The best spot on the web is chef2chef.net. The forums there are populated by both food lovers and professional chefs. Everybody interacts and has a great time, plus exchanges an immense amount of information. You should go!
The TastyWiki is a Wiki recipe site.
Evan Prodromou | evan@prodromou.name | http://evan.prodromou.name/
I use the regular google interface to find recipes all the time... try Green Chili Stew, or Southern Cornbread, etc. you'll get links to most of the websites listed so far plus a few "outliers" that can really be the "better" recipe.
There are lots of recipes at Everything2, some of which are listed at the cookery node.
Brian states in the introduction:
Brian took great care in moderating the group. All units of measure were handled in a way that allowed their conversion between imperial and metric units; Brian also tried to avoid tainting the collection with copyrighted material. The use of the troff macros resulted in recipes, that even today, appear very nice when typeset.In 1993 I converted the Cookbook into a Windows Help file. The conversion was done from the original unformated recipe troff texts, in order to properly translate all character codes, create a list of search keys, and hieararchical content tables. I downloaded the file from its web page, and it still works.
Diomidis Spinellis - #include "/dev/tty"
"Not all of you live on ramen and coffee. "
You forgot (in no particlar order)
1) Jolt
2) Bawls
3) Montain Dew
4) Pizza
5) Chinese Take out
I once formated an ingredient list in pseudo XML as a joke. That got me thinking. Is there an XML cooking spec? Or some cooking programming language?
It should be fairly easy to design, and it would probably be nice to have cooking instructions standardized.
Well, it's not free, but it's worth the money.
Cook's Illustrated selects recipes and exhaustively tests variations to come up with the easiest or best tasting recipe. They investigate why certain varieties of potatoes are good in different recipes, for instance. They'll explain why you should soak fries in ice water before frying them. They'll explain the tricks in getting the meringue right.
If you want recipes with the best results for the effort or you want to learn the underlying theory, Cook's is great. (They also have a PBS show called America's Test Kitchen.)
it's called Cookin' With Google you enter in what items you have laying around your fridge and perhaps which type of cuisine you are interested in and it pulls up recipes on the web based upone the ingrediants you have (using a nifty google API "hack")...
*Shrug*
e.
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Some very nice recipies there, and a number of versions of some of the more popular ones.
The archive at http://www.funet.fi/pub/culture/recipes/ has about 700 recipes others may have more.
Each recipe has a rating for difficulty, time and precision needed.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Remember when looking for baking recipes to have cookies ON on your browser
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
...then there's 'Cookin with Google' which uses Google's API to give you recipies based on ingredents you choose. (it's slick). there's also Top Secret Recipies where you can learn about DIY versions of all your favorite trademarked foodstuffs (like Twinkie(R) filling and Oreos)
Be careful! Bears shouldn't consume large furry dogs.
Just add spam to make it taste more like the internet!
If we think we have all the spices, we then see if we have the other ingredients. If we think we have everything, we try to decide how it should be prepared.
We then run the plan. We taste it along the way to ensure what we expect to happen is actually happening. If we need to (and we are able to), we make changes along the way.
When the cooking is done, we put it in front of the other family members for a quality taste test. If it passes (and it normally does), dinner is served. If not, we head out for a shrink wrapped meal.
Innerweb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
BBC web site. Type in whatever you have in the fridge, and it gives you matching recipes. :-)
Now if everyone just started to comply with internationally agreed upon standards (metric units) I wouldn't get the same uneasy feeling I have when receiving a Word-attachment whenever I read an American/English recipe on the net. It's time for a W3C validator for recipes!
This restricts you pretty much to lichens, leaf mold, and deep-sea jellyfish.
Just the way nature INTENDED us to eat.
--
Sal
Writings: saltation.blogspot.com
Wravings: go-blog-go.blogspot.com