
Wikimedia Cookbook - nerdkid93
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Table_of_Contents
======
bradford
The programmer/engineer in me has been deeply unhappy with recipes (both
online and in print). The recipes in this online book are no exception.

Chief complaint: the ambiguity of description means that ten different chefs
could follow the recipe and have ten different results.

To explain: consider the simple act of "browning an onion". Variables that
might affect the outcome include the fine-ness of the dicing, the heat of the
skillet (is my medium heat the same as yours?) and the extent of
caramelization. The range of outcomes here can be anywhere from a crunchy,
almost raw onion, to a nearly disintegrated brown paste. Take this and
multiply with all the other steps involved in a typical recipe and try to tell
me that the end result is predictable.

Has anyone found any technique/recipe books that attempt to deal with this
ambiguity? The only place I ever see clear instruction on such topics are
cooking classes, but that's not convenient and it makes me wonder what the
point of recipe books are at all.

~~~
crazygringo
> _To explain: consider the simple act of "browning an onion". Variables that
> might affect the outcome include_

Hate to break it to you, but it's even worse. Further variables include the
moisture content which varies per-onion, the type of onion, the size of onion,
the thickness of your pan, and the material it's made out of.

The reality is that cooking is an art, not a science. Even if your equipment
stays the same, every chicken breast and every tomato you buy is different.

Now it totally drives me nuts when people say "if you follow the recipe you
can't go wrong!" There are usually 100 different ways you can go wrong.

But it's just part of cooking. You learn to cook the same way you learned to
walk or throw a ball or speak your language: through trial and error and
careful observation and practice.

The great resource now is YouTube videos, which have the huge advantage of
letting you see exactly what it's supposed to look like when it's done (how
brown is brown? how thick is thickened?), and just by seeing the types of pans
they use and the sizes of flames, and the amount of bubbles or sizzling, you
get actually get a feel for it pretty quick.

Finally, the point of recipe books is to tell you which ingredients, rough
quantities, and the steps. Just because recipes require interpretation
(similar to a music score) doesn't mean they're useless.

~~~
ebg13
> _The reality is that cooking is an art, not a science._

Cooking is a science. If you fail to evaluate your ingredients beforehand,
then you're just not doing the science particularly well. Writing recipes and
interpreting recipes are arts.

~~~
spurdoman77
Sounds like engineering to me.

~~~
qqn
I remember hearing once that baking is a science and cooking an art. If you
mess a step up while baking, your product is generally destroyed. Do the same
while cooking, and you're often left with something that just tastes a little
different (and may even become an updated twist in the recipe).

------
flyGuyOnTheSly
I don't see how this could ever truly compete with traditional cookbooks.

I don't want to eat the exact same macaroni and cheese dish served on one side
of the country that I can on the other.

I think what I am trying to say is that cooking can never be standardized, nor
should it.

You cannot standardize the world's recipes into a monolithic volume like
Wikimedia has done with facts.

I mean you could, but the 7,000 variations on every chef's take on a Reuben
sandwich would be a chore to sift through.

Facts rarely change, tastes often do.

~~~
criley2
I agree that attempting to have one canonical recipe for something like
"Macaroni and Cheese" is futile and counter-productive, but I don't think this
project has to end up like that.

For example, if the Macaroni and Cheese Cookbook page turned into an index for
dozens of M+C recipes, named for the cultural influence or ingredient
influence, that could certainly be useful.

With the current state of recipes on the internet (most are extremely low
quality click-bait designed around ad word integration for profit, for
example, searching "instant pot recipes" returns just loads and loads of
terrible monetized results) a source like this doesn't have to try terribly
hard to be a high quality resource

Even so it feels like it would be more useful as an encyclopedia of flavor
than it would be for help making dinner tonight. Learning about the evolution
of a dish would be very interesting, but I wouldn't trust an anonymous wiki
editor very much in terms of actual cooking

I think the biggest problem to me is that recipes are very much driven by
personality. People learn a few chefs/sources that have produced good results
for them, and they stick to those sources. They go buy the cookbooks from
those people and stay in a safe walled garden where they can trust each recipe

I think another big problem is the low quality of the recipe source.
Traditionally listing ingredients with some steps along the way is sufficient
for the experienced cook, but good modern recipes (to me) do so much more than
list ingredients and steps.

I follow a chef J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and when he breaks down a recipe (for
Serious Eats or his books like The Food Lab) he goes so much more into WHY
each decision was made, which empowers you to not just understand the decision
but also change it.

For example: The All-American Beef Stew
-([https://www.seriouseats.com/2016/01/food-lab-follow-the-
rule...](https://www.seriouseats.com/2016/01/food-lab-follow-the-rules-for-
the-best-all-american-beef-stew.html)) (and the short version
[https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/01/all-american-
bee...](https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/01/all-american-beef-stew-
recipe.html)) Every aspect of the dish is analyzed and discussed!

Or Fuschia Dunlop's translation of Sichuan cooking for a western audience,
(e.g. [https://andrewzimmern.com/2013/03/28/fuchsia-dunlops-fish-
fr...](https://andrewzimmern.com/2013/03/28/fuchsia-dunlops-fish-fragrant-
eggplant/)) she helps distill Chinese culture and the cooking of this region
with a lot more than an ingredient list and a step. That information,
delivered by a trusted expert, is vital to understanding and mastering a dish
from a culture very different than my own.

Why would I want some anonymously written/edited list of ingredients and steps
when I can have a professionally produced, multi-media (huge useful step by
step images AND video), "scientifically-inspired" discussion of the recipe and
why it does what it does?

That's the kicker for me, I'll always go back to Kenji or Alton or Fuschia or
someone I trust because I know they have delivered good results and researched
the recipe deeply enough to help me succeed not just at their version but at
my own version too

~~~
flyGuyOnTheSly
>For example, if the Macaroni and Cheese Cookbook page turned into an index
for dozens of M+C recipes, named for the cultural influence or ingredient
influence, that could certainly be useful.

How could it possibly, though?

I have cue cards I found in my old house when I bought it that have what's
probably a local rendition of macaroni and cheese from the 1960s in Hamilton,
Ontario...

Can I somehow cite that and insert it into the mac and cheese section of the
wiki cookbook?

Or will this just become an digital amalgamation of every printed cookbook in
the world? Using actual books as points of reference and citation?

------
andrewzah
This is an example of people trying to use technology to fix a social problem.

I don't know who is editing or curating these recipes. Taste is subjective. At
least with Wikipedia, I can point X sources and back my claims up. On here, I
could just add random family ad-hoc recipes and no one can really debate them.
Which leads to: Mac n' Cheese 1. Mac n' Cheese 2.

Traditional cookbooks solve a problem: people may not know any recipes (or
want to learn new ones) and want a _curated_ collection from a chef that knows
what they're talking about. Not random people online. Sure, books aren't
guaranteed to be quality, but they're far less likely to be junk than random
websites. They're even better if you only go by word of mouth- ask your
parents/grandparents what they used!

This wikicookbook idea doesn't solve any problems because it's no better than
randomly searching "how to make tres leches cake" and picking some web page
that had good enough SEO to get to the first page of duckduckgo.

\---

Things people actually want and/or need:

* a website that matches (curated) recipes based on your ingredients. i.e. I can input "chicken bouillon, kale", and have it show me various recipes.

* a standardized schema for recipes, i.e. in json. This way we can programmatically build apps, share recipes with friends, and maybe have browser/site integration.

* a digital, open source collection of recipes _only_ from chefs/etc with credentials. aka a curated collection.

* a website that parses said recipes and can display multiple types of units depending on your preferences.

* a website/app that lets you bookmark recipes and automatically parses them with said schema. and lets you categorize/tag recipes so you can filter by "favorites" or "want to try", etc.

Bonus points if your app can interface with Apple's Homepod / Alexa, etc, so I
can confirm a recipe while I'm cooking or washing dishes. This is the biggest
let-down by far for the homepod.

~~~
themodelplumber
You can solve a lot of social problems with software though. For example,
simply extending an existing interface to one that assists users in matching
their subjective taste to others' subjective taste. Goodreads was well known
for this. (Edit: I see the cookbook already has at least one subjective-
qualitative enhancement in the form of the Featured Recipes list)

Also we can be pretty critical here on HN but I see no reason why Wikibooks
must be judged without reference to its potential--not only is it already
helpful to some, for various reasons all along the long tail, but perhaps it's
just a few tweaks away from even greater functionality. Critiques too often
impart the idea that the current experience is lacking _and therefore_ needs
complete replacement by e.g. "a website that..." when the existing efforts at
least show potential in terms of humans being willing to work together
productively toward building a generous resource. That's really something.

~~~
andrewzah
In this particular case, the resource has been around since 2004, and is part
of the wikimedia network. So I highly doubt any of the wants I mentioned will
get implemented if it hasn't already.

A new website/app doesn't have to deal with old stuff so it's free to innovate
its UX, ideas, etc. I also don't like the idea of not using existing work, but
sometimes that's better than trying to adapt a system to do something
completely opposite to its original goals.

I don't intend to be quite critical, but as an amateur cook I just don't see
the need for this. Traditional cookbooks + reading a book like Ratio by
Michael Ruhlman will serve your time far better in my opinion.

------
app4soft
The only thing missed in _Wikibooks_ — export to PDF is disabled now.[0]

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/comments/8yta9l/how_get_p...](https://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/comments/8yta9l/how_get_pdf_export_convert_from_wikibook_now/)

------
nickthemagicman
I need a decent json schema for a recipe. There are some out there but they
have problems. Can we all agree on a recipe json schema so we can put our
recipes in json and share them and make apps on top of them? I'm talking a
schema that has quantity that can be plugged into IoT devices.

------
aaron695
>
> [https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Roasting](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Roasting)

> Roasted foods get drier and browned on the outside by initially exposing it
> to a high temperature. This keeps most of the moisture from being cooked out
> of the food.

This is scientifically wrong I believe.

This is a common problem with attempts at axioms of cooking online like
cooking.stackexchange.com it just can't be crowd source using known methods.
It's mostly incorrect information.

Solve this and you will allow a lot of great wikis happen, but most topics are
stuck here.

Roughly Maths->Physics->Chemistry are ok, then it starts to fail Biology ->

------
codeontheedge
I use Bing Recipes for all my recipe needs and I think it does a great job.
It's a little rough around the edges, but you can tell its a dedicated
investment on their side.

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mmahemoff
I thought it was programming "recipes" for working with Wikimedia at first.

The FAQ should probably mention the year it began, which is 2004 going by
homepage history.

------
dhosek
I misread the title as Mediawiki cookbook and was disappointed to learn that
it wasn't filled with handy tips for customizing a mediawiki site.

------
axiomdata316
I looked up wings and got Wings 3d user manual. Not quite as delicious.

