

Show HN: Fork recipes on the "Github for food" - Cherian
http://www.cucumbertown.com/

======
Cherian
For the hacker in us, we’ve built a short-hand notation for writing recipes

<http://dnhk.me/xSkc>

I always wanted this as a cook & hacker. Not spend too much time writing a
recipe from scratch. More importantly DRY.

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arscan
For those of you that are confused as I was, they are referring to the site as
the "Github for food", and are not managing their content using Github as I
wrongly inferred from the title.

EDIT: title was changed to make this clear.

~~~
Cherian
Sorry, if it’s confusing. What we meant is Cucumbertown allows recipes to be
forked and changed upon.

~~~
arscan
No problem, I was just making sure people didn't misinterpret the title as I
did. I think your new title is quite a bit more clear.

Great site & concept though. I'll be sure to bookmark it and look around
later. I'm curious to see how you applied the forking (I like the pun) concept
on recepes for people that aren't familiar with software version control
systems.

~~~
Cherian
You don’t see it since the post recipe is for the users under login.

But here’s a peep. <http://d.pr/i/DB3L>

When you try to write a recipe, we figure out if the recipe exists and
suggests a “Write a variation”.

The variation is essentially a fork <http://d.pr/i/fG09> that allows you to
delete ingredients, change prep methods etc.

You can manually "fork" a recipe too.

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courtneypowell
I don't normally use recipe sites because they are so obnoxious. My team and I
tried Cucumbertown based on the GitHub comparison and it was worked well.
Check out the Chicken and Mushroom gratin we made here:
[http://www.cucumbertown.com/recipes/55365/chicken-
mushroom-g...](http://www.cucumbertown.com/recipes/55365/chicken-mushroom-
gratin)

------
johnpolacek
Definitely make the Write a Variation more prominent. Also, on the main page
you don't even mention that as a feature. To me, there's lots of recipe sites,
and having the variation aspect is your differentiator, so shout it out! I'd
encourage you to just rip off the Github fork ribbon, because after all, it is
proven to work.

I assume you are working on design? Design will be really important. Having
fun factor in the design combined with the social aspect of forking recipes
could really do well, but you gots some work to do!

~~~
Cherian
It’s a UX battle that we’r trying to conquer. We are just getting started!.

------
zdw
It also appears that this site supports the hRecipe Microformat:

<http://microformats.org/wiki/hrecipe>

That's pretty slick.

------
27182818284
I had this exact same idea years ago. I think I had a better name too. What's
the expression on HN? Was it, "Ideas don't matter, execution does"? :-)

Well done! (Only immediate thought is that you should make the "Write a
Variation" more prominent the way Forking is more prominent on GitHub.)

~~~
Cherian
Execution truly does.

The name bit is a bit surprising to me. As an Indian the name struck with
everyone. But when I came over to the US, the feedback for the name from the
average user was – I’d say not so great.

~~~
lucisferre
First reaction I got from someone was "is that link SFW?"

~~~
Cherian
Talk about cultures.

We are a team of 4 people in 3 continents, none of whom have seen each other
<http://www.cucumbertown.com/humans> and all through our dev process this
never struck us. Guess we are the angels on earth.

There is a story behind the name Cucumbertown.
<http://www.cucumbertown.com/faq/#whatupwithname>

I realized the name issue during my first dialogue at Sand Hill. The
conversations went pretty well until there was a pause towards the end. A
partner chalked in words together and politely asked me if I was open to
changing the name. That’s when it struck. But then we have a reason for it…

~~~
lucisferre
He was half joking. I think.

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nashequilibrium
Are you guys affiliated with yummly because your site looks so close to
yummly's first iteration?
[http://www.crunchbase.com/assets/images/original/0008/4777/8...](http://www.crunchbase.com/assets/images/original/0008/4777/84777v2.jpg)

~~~
Cherian
No

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delano
It looks interesting and I found a couple promising recipes but why not let us
create accounts so we can actually try it out? You'll get more specific
feedback.

~~~
Cherian
Sorry about that. We just launched and is testing waters.

The site is in beta state and we approve people along the way.

I’ve approved on HN folks in queue now. I didn’t see Tucker there.

Hop in…

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ticklishconcept
I'm quite impressed with what these guys have accomplished since only starting
this company a few months ago. Looking forward to what's coming next!

------
Cherian
Dear community,

We just launched <http://tcrn.ch/REN2RU> our public beta.

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United857
Leads to a 404 page at the moment. Please don't post links on HN unless
they're ready.

~~~
Cherian
Sorry, HN traffic crashed us. Back up now.

