Make Food Now Dot Com
October 23, 2012 11:32 AM Subscribe
Does such a recipe website exist?
I had this idea that there must be a recipe website where you type in the ingredients that you have to hand in your fridge / vegetable basket / can cupboard and as you type it narrows down or broadens the recipes for which you have the necessary stuff using a clever algorithm, or working like a naming of parts type key. If not cauliflower then go to mushroom bhaji kind of thing. Google recipes, kind of? Has to be one right? If not, what are the obstacles to building such a thing?
I had this idea that there must be a recipe website where you type in the ingredients that you have to hand in your fridge / vegetable basket / can cupboard and as you type it narrows down or broadens the recipes for which you have the necessary stuff using a clever algorithm, or working like a naming of parts type key. If not cauliflower then go to mushroom bhaji kind of thing. Google recipes, kind of? Has to be one right? If not, what are the obstacles to building such a thing?
Best answer: Are you asking this because you'd like to build one? They exist, but I don't find them very useful -- they give you a list of recipes you can make, but I'd find it helpful to be able to select "mandatory" "optional" etc. If I'm looking for a chicken recipe and just list everything in my cupboard because I want as many options as possible, I end up having to wade through a lot of other recipes that don't have chicken in them before finding the chicken ones.
posted by DoubleLune at 11:49 AM on October 23, 2012
posted by DoubleLune at 11:49 AM on October 23, 2012
Best answer: Supercook allows you to emphasize ingredients - I've found lots of great recipes there. (apple cake! mmmm)
posted by HopperFan at 12:07 PM on October 23, 2012
posted by HopperFan at 12:07 PM on October 23, 2012
Response by poster: I googled 'recipe key', but such is the gastronomic hegemony of key lime pie I didn't get an immediate result for a website that was the actual search term.
I don't have the skills to build a lasagne, let alone a website.
posted by tigrefacile at 12:08 PM on October 23, 2012 [2 favorites]
I don't have the skills to build a lasagne, let alone a website.
posted by tigrefacile at 12:08 PM on October 23, 2012 [2 favorites]
To get more options, I think "recipe by ingredient" is a pretty good Google search.
posted by DoubleLune at 12:43 PM on October 23, 2012
posted by DoubleLune at 12:43 PM on October 23, 2012
When I search for a recipe on Google I get a list of ingredients on the left-hand side with "Yes" and "No" checkboxes next to each one which filter the search results. This evidently is based on microformats which the web sites publishing the recipes are including in the page.
posted by XMLicious at 7:59 PM on October 23, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by XMLicious at 7:59 PM on October 23, 2012 [1 favorite]
Honestly, yeah, Google is that website. Even before the recipe feature that XMLicious is talking about, the best way to get a recipe given a list of ingredients was to google the list of ingredients.
The trick is, if Google can't find all of your search terms in a single page, it will happily serve up pages that include some of them. Google "chicken walnuts spam olives" (without quotation marks) and you get some chicken-and-olives recipes and some chicken-and-walnuts recipes and...
posted by nebulawindphone at 9:18 PM on October 23, 2012
The trick is, if Google can't find all of your search terms in a single page, it will happily serve up pages that include some of them. Google "chicken walnuts spam olives" (without quotation marks) and you get some chicken-and-olives recipes and some chicken-and-walnuts recipes and...
posted by nebulawindphone at 9:18 PM on October 23, 2012
I use Yummly.com for this. In the past I've used Recipe Source because what I really wanted was like five similar green bean recipes so that I could find the one that worked for the way I cooked and whatever nutritional impact I was looking for. It uses Google as its back end so all the recipes can be found via google also.
posted by jessamyn at 8:24 AM on October 24, 2012
posted by jessamyn at 8:24 AM on October 24, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Dansaman at 11:36 AM on October 23, 2012