

Show HN: Guided Recipe Creation - kbrower
http://www.recipelabs.com/add/

======
tptacek
It's interesting. Wholesale scraping of thousands of other peoples' recipes is
ballsy, clever, but makes me a bit queasy.

But, I'm not sure how useful it is _in this packaging_.

The service that makes a shopping list for me for a given dish seems valuable.
But the service that tries to lay out quantities seems sketchy. All you're
providing is an ingredient list, not the technique; to get technique, you have
to click through to one of a zillion recipes, and none of the ingredient lists
in those recipes corresponds exactly to the ingredient list in your app.

Also, you need to do a better job with proteins. You can't make duck confit
with "N pounds of duck"; you need duck legs (also fat, which didn't come up in
the list at all). Similarly, chicken paprikash is made with thighs, not "N
pounds of chicken". The solution to this is probably just to break animals up
into retail cuts in your database.

There's a genuinely valuable "recipe lab" product to be built using a database
of flavor profiles (like The Flavor Bible), a database of ratios (like from
Ratio), and a database of core techniques ("roast", "braise", "fry",
"aromatize", etc).

One thing that'd be neat to do would be to scrape flavor pairings from your
database of recipes, do build a bottom-up "Flavor Bible" instead of trying to
figure out a way to get the rights to the Flavor Bible itself.

~~~
nitrogen
_It's interesting. Wholesale scraping of thousands of other peoples' recipes
is ballsy, clever, but makes me a bit queasy._

You probably already know this, but the ingredients lists are not
copyrightable according to [<http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html>]. It
seems from reading that site that the list of steps that gets loaded when you
import a recipe _may_ be subject to copyright, depending on how closely those
steps resemble the original recipe's instructions, and whether the original
instructions were copyrightable.

I'll agree that common flavor pairings, frequently associated spices, and best
techniques for a given ingredient are the more interesting data. It'd be great
to ask the database what spices are frequently used in Thai food, for example.
Combine it with a list of local suppliers of hard-to-find or imported
ingredients and you have a winner.

~~~
tptacek
So, what you really want is _The Flavor Bible_ (you can get it on your
Kindle), which is an intensely well curated, expert-driven dictionary of
flavor pairings. For instance, Thai: Thai basil, bell peppers, CHILE PEPPERS,
_cilantro_ , _coconut_ , coriander, cumin, _curries_ , fish, _fish sauce_ ,
_garlic_ , ginger, herbs (fresh), _lemongrass_ , lime, mint, noodles,
_peanuts_ , rice, shirmp paste, sugar, _turmeric_ , vegetables.

The basic database you're looking for already exists (and, if you cook
regularly, at a very reasonable price). You should just buy the book. Yes, it
does beg to be a web app, but you need the expertise behind the book more than
you need the convenient interface. I'm wary of convenient- but- bad- answers
to important questions.

------
jmilloy
A lot of comments here are about what you can't do with this site (with the
usual conclusion that therefore the site is useless). Sure, there are some
things it doesn't do. It doesn't teach you how to cook, or do your shopping,
or do your homework...

But for what it is, I love it. A recipe is two parts - the ingredients (in
what proportions), and how to use them. This completely separates the "how"
from the "what" and that's great. Sometimes, I know how to make something, but
I need suggestions on what the proportions should be. I like that I can add my
own ingredients and find out proportions, or that new ingredients are
suggested below. In fact, coupled with the recipes on the side, I can find out
how to make it, and immediately vary to my taste. A normal recipe doesn't do
that, and unless I've made something many times, I might not have the
proportions down pat.

Complaining that this product isn't a different product doesn't make sense to
me. If you are completely uncreative when cooking and require exact recipes
then don't use this. Or if you already know how to cook something, then why do
you care, for example, that "duck" is listed instead of "fat" and "duck legs"?
For anyone in between, I think you can use this to easily and successfully
adjust a recipe you already sort of know. And that's cool.

------
sray
I think this is really cool from a technical perspective, but I don't
understand the purpose of the guided recipe tool.

Why would I want to create a recipe with the tool in the first place? If I'm
just submitting an existing recipe of mine to an online database, then the
ingredient/quantity predictions aren't that helpful. If I'm trying to create a
new recipe, then why would I want to submit it? I've never cooked it before -
it might be terrible!

Even a short blurb on the recipe tool page explaining what I should use it for
and why it's useful would be helpful. As it stands, this dumb user doesn't get
it.

BTW, I love the design of the main page and the "create a recipe page". Very
clean and easy to use. However, while viewing a recipe, I found it a little
odd that the ingredients were listed in the right column. I found myself
looking at the picture and reading the instructions before ever seeing the
ingredients.

------
aaronjg
One cool feature would be how to handle substitutions. For example, if I am
trying to make a pie crust. And I don't have butter, it would be good to be
able to cross out butter, and see crisco or vegetable oil added to the list.
Or by adding Crisco, see that the butter is removed from the menu. Because a
Pie crust recipe without shortening does not a pie crust make.

However general baking is more difficult than cooking, since the ratios are so
much more important. But it also means the app would have so much more value
added in this context.

------
thirdstation
It looks nice. I like the simple and functional design.

I don't know how I'd use this though. If I want to make pancakes and type that
in it gives me six of the seven ingredients required for basic American
pancakes.

What would be useful is if I can input the ingredients I have and the app will
tell me what I can make -- and create a shopping list for items I don't have
(including coupons).

~~~
kbrower
<http://www.recipepuppy.com/> is what I made to search for recipes that use
ingredients you already have. It lacks the shopping list functionality though.

------
zeratul
I see the biggest value in the auto-generated Nutritional Information. Obesity
is one of the major factors behind high healthcare costs in the U.S.

If you can incentives image upload along the recipes, you could build a nice
database with image and calories as a label. Then you are one step towards
building algorithm where you shoot a photo of your food and get approximate
calories. This gives you millions of dollars of healthcare venture capital
from obesity prevention programs for household environments.

P.S. Plum Vodka is called Slivovitz.

------
mark_l_watson
Pretty cool - I like it. Sort of like the Chef expert system written years ago
by the Conceptual Dependency people except I bet you are matching recipe title
names and recipes on the web to the text entered for "What is the dish?"

Because it is really important for my health to track my vitamin K intake,
five years ago I built a recipe web site (cookingspace.com) that gives a
breakdown of nutrients in recipes that I use. Simple to do, except figuring
out the USDA nutrition database.

------
ryanwaggoner
You need units; I typed in lasagna and got suggestions for "200 cheese" and "1
beef".

EDIT: just realized that I actually typed in "lasanga", hence the weird
ingredients.

------
Santas
Cooking + statistics = ♥

Design is really nice, I'll just make hover menu font little bigger and
changed the color of "ask a question" btn.

------
mattslight
There's a related but different recipe tool in the UK:

<http://www.foodily.com/>

~~~
archangel_one
I much prefer Recipe Labs; the front page is actually useful to me since I can
immediately fiddle with recipes or browse existing ones without being nagged
about "signing up".

Minor niggles: \- on the "newest recipes" list: they all say things like
"Created on 24 minutes ago". Drop the "on" (presumably this is there for older
recipes that might get a date against them?). \- after clicking on "coupons"
some of the top menu links are no longer correct

I often find myself wondering what to cook of an evening so a good recipe site
is definitely of interest. Looks like it's aggregating quite a lot of other
content though so I guess the challenge is for it to be better at recipe
searches than Google.

~~~
kbrower
Thanks! I fixed the minor niggles.

------
Sol2Sol
Did you do the OSQA implementation yourself? I want to deploy OSQA for an idea
in a niche area I'm testing. I want to do Q&A but I also want to add a news
section sort of like the setup here on Hacker News. I'm not sure how easy it
is to customize OSQA though. I am not a developer so I would be willing to
part with a few dollars to get this done.

------
Zolomon
You should definitely show temperatures and measurements in SI units as well
for us Scandinavians (and other non-crazy folks)!

------
konstruktor
Interesting concept. I suppose this is based on statistics/ml, which is nice
for finding positive matches. It doesn't work with diets avoiding certain
ingredients like vegetarian, vegan or gluten-free. Typing gluten free, the
first ingredient I get is flour. Vegan curry gives me some butter curries.
Edit: order of words

------
duck
Very nice job and I although I'm not much of a baker I think I could see
myself using this as I have always wanted to tweak some of my favorites. One
thing I noticed if you import a recipe is that you get a bunch of
_0.666666666667_ type units, you probably should just provide the fraction for
those.

------
Robin_Message
Hmmm, lamb rogan josh requires 54 onions? And 406 (and a half) lambs?

As other's have said, probably better not to focus too much on quantities and
more on necessary/optional ingredients and how to source them.

------
sycren
Is there any way of changing how the ingredients are measured ie pounds to
grams?

Also.. perhaps cups is not the best way to measure onions ;)

Nice work though, design looks slick

------
mrjbq7
Great idea - I particularly like the "just add basil" option when I was making
lasagna.

Btw, you spelled "cholesterol" wrong in the nutrition information section.

------
CaveTech
There's a small bug where if you try to add another ingredient after you've
typed something in the box, it deletes the current row and adds a new one.

------
vitorbal
Really nice, although if I type for example "omellete" (notice the typo)
instead of "omelette" it gives me an HTTP500..

------
jwblackwell
Design is cool and I love the concept. You seem to have fallen into the (lack
of) contrast trap with the text though.

------
brador
How did you get that labs page looking like stackoverflow? Have they finally
open sourced their code?

~~~
kbrower
I am using OSQA for the Question and Answer section

------
bishnu
Wow this thing is awesome. Wish it was a little faster.

~~~
kbrower
The server is under more load than I expected. I wish I could fix this is the
near term, but if you try again later it should be much faster.

------
noduerme
Yum, except you might have to tweak whatever function you're using to add or
multiply ingredients... I typed in "popcorn" and it suggested using 9 1/2 cups
of popcorn =) I think you might need to average that out???
<https://strikesapphire.com/popcorn_ludicrous.png>

Also, btw. Corn syrup? Not a common household ingredient (nice rip off the
packaging list, I guess?) 3/8ths cup of sugar on TOP of the corn syrup? Dude,
you're crazy!

~~~
noduerme
Oh wait, I'm seeing it says "Popped popcorn". Well, if you're not going to
tell me how to make it I'm not sure why I'm going to your site =\

