Where does "Cashew, Carrot and Cardamom Cupcakes with Cashew Cream Cheese Frosting go?

March 3, 2009 8:08 AM

Help an application Luddite find a good system for organising recipes.

I'm looking for a blog-like organisational system that I can use for an offline compendium of files--specifically, a recipe collection. I'd like to be able to sort, cross-reference, etc., using tags and keywords like ingredients or recipe type, instead of having either a glut of filenames that need to be scanned or an arbitrary filing system based on name or main ingredient or whatever.

Does anything like this exist as a non web-based application? I'm currently on a Mac but once I get back to the States will be back on Linux.

posted by the luke parker fiasco to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

RecipeBook has most features you mentioned, but is a program that runs on Mac. You are able to export the recipes you have saved if you wished to move them to another program.
posted by ijoyner at 8:12 AM on March 3, 2009

Evernote might work.
posted by special-k at 8:14 AM on March 3, 2009

Try Azzcard here! Good for organizing recipes and all sorts of things.
posted by lungtaworld at 9:07 AM on March 3, 2009

Sorry I was too fast.
It runs on all versions of Windows but apparently not Mac or Linux machines.
posted by lungtaworld at 9:10 AM on March 3, 2009

I've played with some of the recipe software for Mac and YummySoup! stood out to me most. I think it'll handle everything you said.
posted by Outis at 9:51 AM on March 3, 2009

[url=http://www.tiddlywiki.com/]TiddlyWiki[/url] is not recipe specific, but meets your needs and is easy to use.
posted by torquemaniac at 10:27 AM on March 3, 2009

That's TiddlyWiki.
posted by torquemaniac at 10:28 AM on March 3, 2009

I use Evernote too. I like being able to have a separate category for recipes, as well as another one for shopping lists. Everything is taggable and I can view them on my iphone, which is great for shopping at the last minute and also for figuring out what to have for dinner or that potluck without needing my laptop.
posted by jvilter at 11:05 AM on March 3, 2009

I use Evernote for this also. Runs on every OS, syncs with their website, has mobile applications, supports tagging and different collections of notes, you can stick images and all that good stuff in it, etc.
posted by bradbane at 11:39 AM on March 3, 2009

Evernote
posted by cda at 12:29 PM on March 3, 2009

DevonThink. No need to tag or associate keywords. Dump in PDF's, web pages, Word/Pages files, videos, just about anything you can think of. I set up my recipe database by using simple categories (beef, dessert, pork, poultry, soup, stew, bread, etc...). Then drag/drop the recipe in the correct major category. Once it's in DevonThink, let the AI search function of DT do the work for you. For example, if you put the "Cashew Carrot and Cardamom Cupcake" recipe in "bakery," and two years later you need that recipe, but all you can think of is that it had cardamom in it, you'll find it with a simple search for cardamom or whatever other ingredient you can remember. Heck, it even finds and groups together words with foreign language phrases. Last night, I was trying to find a carne asada recipe and was amazed at all of the other latin recipes DT found that it thought might be conceivably related to carne asada.

It's not cheap, but it does the job incredibly well (and not just for recipes). Wait till you start dumping your "restaurant must-visit" lists/articles into it. Going to NYC this weekend, run a search on New York City and you'll find it. Very cool.
posted by webhund at 1:08 PM on March 3, 2009

I use Evernote for this, too. I'm still in the process of getting my recipes into it, but so far it's working out great.
posted by Stacey at 2:54 PM on March 3, 2009

I installed Gourmet Recipe Manager recently. It's free and trustworthy: it was reviewed on Lifehacker and it is hosted on Sourceforge. Whether or not you like it really depends on how much trouble you are prepared to take, to install it. I struggled to install it on Windows but then again I saw the installation build as a personal challenge -- I love to play with this sort of thing. Now I have it installed, I love the package - which does everything you need. For details about how to install on Linux and Mac platforms, see this page.
posted by Susurration at 6:55 PM on March 4, 2009