
Show HN: Find the best recipe for any two foods, based on over 600k recipes - qrv3w
http://www.foodpairing.ninja/pairs.html
======
ethanpil
Very cool. Some ideas I would love to see:

1) Exclude recipe that include particular ingredient(s). (dietary
restrictions)

2) Tooltips in the column headings that explain the various ratings and
indexes you are using

~~~
ergothus
#1 would be huge for me. I'm vegetarian, and hate green peppers, which means
some 80% (made up stat) of all vegetarian recipes are no go for me.

My wife, in turn, is vegetarian and a very picky eater (she has "texture"
issues with food). These sorts of features would be very useful for me to cook
for her.

General appeal to the universe: If feeding a group, particularly vegetarians,
DON'T go for a "use everything" strategy. That's like ordering Supreme pizzas
for a group - if everyone dislikes one ingredient (but different for each),
all you've done is made everyone unhappy.

~~~
sithadmin
> If feeding a group, particularly vegetarians, DON'T go for a "use
> everything" strategy.

Mind fleshing out that idea a bit more? I don't entirely understand what
you're getting at, given that most people don't try to include as many
ingredients in a dish as possible just for the sake thereof.

~~~
ergothus
> given that most people don't try to include as many ingredients in a dish as
> possible just for the sake thereof

You would think so, but my experience says differently when it comes to being
a vegetarian.

Take an random "average" (i.e. off the top of my head) US meal: some sort of
noodles with a beef-based sauce, green beans, and biscuits. But the green
beans have ham in them, and the biscuits are made with lard (I spent some time
in the South, where ham is a seasoning and not a meat, it shows).

You'd think "well, gee, if we just make the green beans w/o ham, and the
biscuits without lard, we can serve portobello mushrooms or a second vegetable
or a vegetarian sauce on the noodles and the vegetarians will be happy!". And
for me, at least, you'd be right, and I suspect in general.

But instead, what happens is that they make a second, distinct meal, into
which they throw as many vegetarian things as they can find. Say, green
peppers stuffed with quinoa, tomatoes, and artichoke bits. Or a kale salad
with cooked eggplant and red peppers. etc.

When they order pizza, they get pepperoni for the meat eaters, but they get
the olive/green pepper/onion/spinach/tomato chunks/mushroom for the
vegetarians. Why not just cheese? The cheese pizza almost always runs out at
gatherings I've been at that were lucky enough to have it as an option. (Note:
I'm not addressing the vegans here, because I'm not a vegan so I have no real
experience, and it's much harder to do "like the meat eater version, but
vegan")

Okay, "as many vegetarian things as they can find" is hyperbole. But I'm faced
with, instead of getting the same thing the meat eaters get, minus meat, is a
conglomeration of things, at least one of which I'm likely not to like.

I think it's because people think simple vegetable options are "boring", and
they need to spice it up. (and rather than use actual spices to do so, they
try for variety in the same dish) That's my theory, anyway.

Hope that addressed your question...I sort of rant-vented a bit. I'll also add
that I don't generally expect people to accommodate my desires, I just find it
sad when they try and mess it up.

~~~
sithadmin
>"average" US meal: some sort of noodles with a beef-based sauce, green beans,
and biscuits

Is this what vegetarians believe the rest of us eat?

~~~
ergothus
I was a meat eater for a long time. The above sounds perfectly tasty, but of
course everyone eats differently.

That said, I did say I spent time in the US South, and I'm originally from
Pennsylvania (Home of Scrapple!), so my food expectations might be a little
off :)

------
elcapitan
I like this, but: The recipes are from food.com (linking there once you have
chosen your two ingredients). What's the difference from simply entering your
two ingredients into the search box of food.com? (I tried it and got
relatively similar results).

~~~
qrv3w
You're right, most of the recipes are from food.com (they have one of the
biggest databases). There is also data from epicurious, nytimes cooking,
allrecipes and a few others.

~~~
vblord
Interesting. How did you get the recipes from food.com? Did you just scrape
them or is there a data feed somewhere?

------
timsco
This is a bit off topic, but have you ever seen this book? It's an amazing
dictionary of food pairings: [http://www.amazon.com/Flavor-Bible-Essential-
Creativity-Imag...](http://www.amazon.com/Flavor-Bible-Essential-Creativity-
Imaginative/dp/0316118400/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1455632138&sr=1-1&keywords=flavor+bible)

~~~
pjmorris
Terrific book, we use it often when trying to come up with new ways to use
what we have. There's a lot of value added by the chef interviews and recipes,
but the core of the book just cries out to be a database and an app; they
basically have a schema for how ingredients pair and group.

------
mark_l_watson
I do something similar on cookingspace.com - I use 100K public domain recipes
to correlate food ingredients that frequently appear together in recipes. I
also use the USDA nutrition database. My site is just a hobby site.

Congrats to foodpairing ninja - hacking on food stuff is fun!

~~~
bduerst
Is the search down?

[http://cookingspace.com/?query=strawberry](http://cookingspace.com/?query=strawberry)

~~~
mark_l_watson
I run this on a free Heroku plan, so it probably timed out for the day. This
site is just a hobby for me but I should upgrade it to a paid for always on
plan.

------
fuhrysteve
This is really cool, thanks for sharing it! I've been looking for tools that
do things like this, however most things I've found end up being thrown
together crap whose only goal is to serve as click-bait.

My suggestion is to spend some time thinking about the pitch - because right
now it seems really complicated for how simple it is to use the tool. For
instance, to me as a user, it isn't immediately clear to me what this tool is
- are we pairing ingredients for a single recipe? Is it meal planning -
multiple dishes that go together?

Allow me to brainstorm some ideas. Take them or leave them as you may!

make "Pick an ingredient to Start" smaller and somewhere where it's viewed
more as an instruction than a title (maybe right above the table in bold &
medium gray (#696969 or so)

Make the title explicitly state the problem / solution (rather than
instructions)... something like "Find the Best Recipe by Ingredient" \- I'm
sure you can wordsmith it better.

Try to express it simply and clearly enough that you feel comfortable deleting
the two paragraphs at the top starting with "Go ahead and search [...]"

As it happens, I find the hacker news post more informative than the site
itself about what this tool does. I would replace "food" with "ingredient" in
the title of this post, though, since "food" is too vague and gets back to the
whole "is this for meal planning?" question.

~~~
qrv3w
Thanks! You're right, I should refine the idea a little more. Initially the
idea was based around a question: "what are the best pairs of ingredients?"
since I couldn't find many resources to answer it. Now it has evolved a bit
since then to be more of a site to find recipes based on ingredients. From the
comments here it seems like that might be a good route to follow. Really
appreciate your brainstorming ideas!

------
VLM
It was not quite what I expected, I fed it olive oil and potato to see what
happens because there's a lot of things you can do with fried potato...
instead I got all kinds of random stuff that do well with potatos as more or
less a side dish. Needs "two main ingredients" not just two things happening
to be on the list in a dish that tastes good.

I greatly enjoyed the "Worst Pairings" and recommend people click that. Red
pepper ginger ale, LOL.

~~~
qrv3w
Thanks, I think you're right. I can do some more filtering to only include
main ingredients.

------
flashm
Great idea. Iterate on it.

I've always wanted to make something like this, for when you've got some stuff
in the fridge but don't know what to make.

Input: "Eggs, carrots, beef, whatever"

Output: Some tasty looking recipes by rating.

~~~
nommm-nommm
There is a book called What To Cook When You Think There's Nothing in the
House To Eat that is an attempt to solve this problem. I've never read it
though, so I can't really say if it works or not.

That being said recipe ratings are so useless.

~~~
ssmoot
They'd be a lot more useful if recipe sites would just let you flag reviewers
who didn't follow the recipe though.

I swear 75% of negative recipe reviews I've read go something like this:

> I substituted the flour for corn starch, the butter for applesauce (watching
> my figure!) and the pasta for some awesome butternut squash. Since my SO
> can't tolerate dairy I smartly replaced the cream with mayonnaise and the
> parmesan with my own special mixture of bread-crumbs crisco and salt. THIS
> FETTUCCINE ALFREDO RECIPE IS DISGUSTING! WORST I'VE EVER HAD!!!"

And then of course somewhere near the top you'll always have an actual review
that leads with a note about people who post reviews of their own concoctions
instead of the recipe at hand.

~~~
voltagex_
This is a problem food bloggers have a lot - [http://the-
toast.net/2014/09/04/eighteen-kinds-people-commen...](http://the-
toast.net/2014/09/04/eighteen-kinds-people-comment-recipe-blog/)

------
benmw333
I think I'm going to like using this more than google/allrecipes/etc... its
clean and uncluttered. Dig it. Thanks

------
stenius
pretty cool but I noticed that it is getting bananas and banana peppers mixed
up.

[http://www.foodpairing.ninja/banana/ground-
beef/](http://www.foodpairing.ninja/banana/ground-beef/)

~~~
qrv3w
Thanks for spotting that! I'll fix it.

------
greggman
Seems very western oriented? Tried various ingredients very common in other
parts of the world but they aren't in the list. Heck even "shrimp" is not on
the list.

Maybe it should be "Find the best recipe from this short list of 2 foods ..."

~~~
realusername
Seems just very English oriented you mean ? Not even western. Just look at the
best pairing list, even if it goes well together, it's clearly not what I
would put in the list myself.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Not English, American.

------
samstave
Wow this is cool. An idea:

From mobile, allow me to scan a barcode of an ingredient while at the grocery
store and find a recipe so o can get all the proper ingredients.

Also start asking the price of anything scanned to start collecting costing
data for each item and ultimately recipe and portion.

For example: "my budget is $25 for two and we want to eat a fish dish"

------
kbrower
Cool! I did something similar awhile back
[http://www.ingredientpairings.com/](http://www.ingredientpairings.com/)
[http://www.cookthing.com/](http://www.cookthing.com/)

~~~
papa_bear
Do you still make updates for recipe labs? I remember being pretty blown away
by how much stuff you managed to cram in there, and it was a big inspiration
for me when I started building EatThisMuch. We're still dragging our feet on
creating a bunch of features that you've had for years :)

------
parsethis
Love the idea. I instantly tried almonds and apple juice and was surprised
that they are recipes (and the amount of such) for this pairing! However, my
exploration stopped there. Work on finding was to make it easier to explore,
I'd rather not paginate.

~~~
qrv3w
Thanks, that's a great suggestion.

------
overcast
I like this, are you planning on opening up an API? I could use this feature
for [http://imadefood.com](http://imadefood.com) that I launched a few weeks
ago. Might be able to work something mutually beneficial.

~~~
qrv3w
Certainly, I could add an API. Find me on Twitter @zack_118 and lets chat.

------
benten10
Pretty cool!

I'd also want to know _what_ kinds of certain vegetables to get. For example,
the difference between sweet tomatoes and sour tomatoes is the difference
between a loved friend and a great cook, and an idiot who shouldn't have been
let into the kitchen ; ). Same with the different kinds of onions, and so
forth. While, as they are, the 'what to buy' list is moderately useful, it
would be 100x more if we had greater details!

Edit: Want to add something else. Haha, it shows ginger ale and red pepper as
one of the worst combinations. It feels that someone should experiment, and
make something good out of that. It doesn't feel too wrong (as wrong as, say,
soft cheese and yogurt).

~~~
qrv3w
That's a great suggestion, to discern between types of vegetables. I'll think
about that.

------
ank_the_elder
Is it possible to restrict the number of ingredients to a given maximum? This
would be very useful if you choose two very general ingredients - like I just
did with 'chicken meat' and 'tomato'

------
arbuge
This is very cool. But the number of ingredients needs to be increased (only
240 right now). Mentioned this to my wife, and she chose lotus root, which
isn't in there. 600k recipes is very impressive obviously.

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kwhitefoot
Needs to include synonyms for ingredients: no eggplant/aubergine.

Has some glaring omissions: doesn't find capsicum but does have red pepper.

Needs definitions of the ingredients. A cucumber where I am (Norway) means
what is known in the US (at least in NC) as an English cucumber. But the site
doesn't make the distinction. If I make a cheese and cucumber sandwich I would
expect English cucumber to be used.

Nonetheless, an interesting idea and a good start.

------
benwills
This is great. It's one of those totally obvious ideas that everyone else just
missed. Stick with it and keep refining and improving. The line of thinking is
fantastic.

~~~
qrv3w
Thanks!

------
nightbrawler
Very cool idea!

As I was going through the top pairings I noticed a strange pair of "milk and
poi" ...it looks like it's picking up the word "points" as an ingredient

example:
[http://www.foodpairing.ninja/milk/poi/](http://www.foodpairing.ninja/milk/poi/)

~~~
qrv3w
Good catch, I'll fix that.

------
rubidium
Why is almond different than almonds?

More whitespace between navigation and ads please. Also, for my UI intuition,
it would make sense to flip search box and "Show __ entries".

Overall, fast and fun to see some ideas. I do like the "what to buy" list, as
it shows what a well stocked kitchen should have on hand.

~~~
qrv3w
Great ideas! Thanks, I'll work on that and fix the plural detection.

------
ipsin
It would be good to have aliases for some foods. I was trying it on my own
cooking, which involved "bok choi" and "onion". I didn't find "bok choi", but
I did find "chinese cabbage", which is apparently the same thing?

~~~
vilhelm_s
My impression is that "chinese cabbage" more often refers to napa cabbage,
which is different.

------
samstave
Also, for humor make sure you've read this:

[http://the-toast.net/2014/09/04/eighteen-kinds-people-commen...](http://the-
toast.net/2014/09/04/eighteen-kinds-people-comment-recipe-blog/)

------
acidity
This is so cool. I am actually planning to start working on something similar
but for wet shaving market. Basically, I was trying to setup something where
user can choose their after shave pairing based on scent details.

Do you have plans to open source your algorithm?

------
S4M
It's neat, but the search itself is tedious, as I have to type the first
ingredient, click on it, then type the second ingredient and click on it.
Wouldn't it be better (faster at least) to type the two ingredients separated
by a space?

~~~
qrv3w
Good idea! I can add that.

~~~
kylemathews
Perhaps use a multi-select autocomplete widget. That'd make it simple to let
people filter by more than two ingredients.

------
wheeliez
Love it! It's fast and snappy. What tech did you use to build this? Is it open
source? Are you planning to release an API? :)

~~~
qrv3w
Thanks! I used Python to pull everything together. The site itself is
statically generated (hence the speed) using homemade templating, and the
pages are hosted on Github (the repo for the site is here:
[https://github.com/schollz/flavor-combos](https://github.com/schollz/flavor-
combos). I don't suggest cloning this as its over 1GB). The code I used for
generating the site is not open-source, yet... I can put it out there if folks
are interested. An API is something I am planning on doing!

------
butler14
This is pretty fun to play around with. Especially the lowest rated pairings.

Seaweed and unsalted butter is on the menu for this evening.

~~~
cr1895
I really don't know if you're being flippant or not, but the seaweed butter
crepes at Cafe Breizh in Paris are insanely good.

They combine toasted nori with high-quality Breton salted butter. It's a
delicious combination (but you need the salt!).

~~~
overcast
Butter makes everything awesome. It's the "secret" ingredient in every
restaurant.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Butter is not a precise enough word in this context. Most US butter I have had
was essentially just milk solids whereas most European butter is cultured
butter and has a quite different flavour. I introduced one of my US colleagues
to European butter and his instant reaction was that he now understood why
people put it on bread.

------
burmask
Checkout foodcombo.com and foodpairing.com.

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
Great links, especially the first one as it requires no registration and Just
Works(tm). Thanks!

------
Al-Khwarizmi
Very nice, but I guess it will support more than two ingredients in the
future, right? Two is a bit limited.

------
sabya
Wanted to try this out. Had avocado at home. Paired with Almond. Picked the
top recipe. Loved it!

------
struct
Super neat! I love this concept and I will totally use it. I particularly like
its speed.

~~~
qrv3w
Thanks. Its actually a static site, to help with the speed.

------
btbuildem
Get that purple bunny off the page and you've got something there.

~~~
Something1234
I can't find him is he gone.

------
wakkadakka
A bug - when I search for eggs, it gives me eggplant recipes.

~~~
tpowell
Ha, my first search was for eggplant (new-ish vegetarian) and I got nothing.

Amazing potential for a site like this, though. Should partner with Forks over
Knives folks to get the word out.

------
gearoidoc
Whats with the purple rabbit? Or am I seeing things?

------
zodPod
I just ordered 4lbs of coconut flour from amazon. I have a goal for it but it
won't take 4lbs... I was hoping for that to be in this database... Nope..

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janci
Are those 600,000 recipes downloaded and paired in my browser? Or can anyone
explain, why it freezes the browser and cooks (pun intended) the CPU?

------
2pointsomone
Seriously - ads already? Use "Show HN" to show something you made something
that people can love. Commercialization can follow later.

~~~
voltagex_
Nope. Sites cost money to run especially if it gets a lot of traffic from HN
and other sites. If my budget is $0, then running ads can help me pay the $5
Digital Ocean bill for the month, the $20 CloudFlare bill, domain renewal etc
etc. I'd wager a large number of visitors from here are running ad blocking
though.

------
mhb
Next?: Netlfix style recommendations for new recipes given a set of other
recipes I've liked?

------
tmaly
very cool, thanks for making this.

