Organize my recipes!
November 16, 2022 8:45 PM   Subscribe

I'd like some sort of organization or database for my recipes, both online and cookbooks. I've considered using Evernote, but am wondering if that's actually the best way to do this?

We have probably hundreds of recipes saved in various places. Desired features include:

- A service that's likely to exist for a while
- Should be able to handle recipes that are both online or from physical cookbooks (but I'm ok linking to something like eatyourbooks.com for the cookbook recipes or even just entering the name but not the recipe). Recipes are from both the open web and NYT Cooking.
- Should have good support for tagging and searching tags. This is the key feature I want and the main reason I'm looking to upgrade from my current system of sticky notes and bookmarks.
- Bonus points for being easily shared between two people (but we're also ok sharing a login).
- Having an app is good, but not strictly a requirement

I'm thinking about using the Web Clipper extension for Evernote to import all the online recipes as notes and then manually adding notes for the recipes from the cookbooks I have and having it all in a single notebook. But I'm wondering whether Evernote is really the right tool for this or if there's something better out there?

I've used Yummly, but my understanding is that I wouldn't be able to include recipes from physical cookbooks.

I don't care about any shopping list features.
posted by matildatakesovertheworld to Food & Drink (19 answers total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
I switched to Paprika a few years ago after balking at the $30 price tag for a while. It was very much worth it. For adding recipes from books, you can find many of them online and for those you can't, you need a decent OCR option to pull the text from a photo. My phone does a good job, but Evernote probably does as well. There is a trial for you to see if you like it.
posted by soelo at 9:04 PM on November 16, 2022 [12 favorites]


paprika goes on sale every so often too, you might want to see what happens for black friday
posted by fingersandtoes at 9:09 PM on November 16, 2022 [3 favorites]


Watching this thread with interest. I use a super old version of Paprika that they haven't gone out of their way to kill, so +1 to them for being reasonable. Maybe I should upgrade.

Talking about Evernote though, it's worth pointing out that they just got bought out by a company known for...aggressive monetization. I wouldn't place a big bet on it right now.
posted by davidest at 9:22 PM on November 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


Thirding Paprika. I like the way it strips the BS out of online recipe formatting. It extracts the list of ingredients to one area, the instructions to another area, and everything else goes in a description field. I can follow online recipes much more easily in Paprika than in a browser.
posted by hovey at 9:26 PM on November 16, 2022 [2 favorites]


I've been using Evernote for many years for recipes and a whole bunch of other stuff. It works great (as long as you're online. It's more problematic otherwise). I like that it's searchable, I can include images, works across platforms, on tablet, on mobile, etc.

I hadn't heard of the acquisition, so now I'm a bit worried about it (thanks for the link davidest!).

Before Evernote I used to use Microsoft's OneNote which I quite liked. I made the switch to Evernote because there wasn't a mobile OneNote client at the time (looks like that's no longer the case). I like being able to pull up a recipe on my phone when I suddenly decide to make a certain dish while I'm in the middle of the supermarket.

I don't know if you can get OneNote without paying for the whole office suite though.

Another option which isn't as slick is to use Google Docs/Drive and just make a separate doc per recipe. It'll be easily shareable and searchable. I don't think they support tags though. My guess is that the service will be around for a long time.
posted by DrumsIntheDeep at 9:44 PM on November 16, 2022


I am using CopyMeThat for recipes and I love it.
posted by alchemist at 10:17 PM on November 16, 2022


This is weirdly timely! This is what I've been blogging about for the last few weeks. I'm right in the middle of three-part series I'm writing on organizing recipes. The already published posts I wrote for paper and digital methods for organizing recipes are linked here and I did write about Evernote in the latter post, as many of my clients use it for the exact reasons you describe.

Yes, Evernote was purchased today by Bending Spoons, and nobody know how that will impact things long term, but whether you're trying to capture, organize, annotate, or share, and especially if you want to tag (which I explain in the second post), I think you'd have more likelihood of Evernote (which has individual, team, and corporate users) lasting long term than a recipe app. (In full disclosure, I'm a Certified Evernote Expert; I don't get paid by them or anything, but as a professional organizer and productivity coach, I got certified so that I could better train my clients who wanted to use it.)

The final post (but not until Monday) will be on apps (Paprika, Whisk, BigOven, CopyMeThat, Yummly, etc.), but I haven't finished researching/writing yet.

The advice in my posts was focused mainly on organizing loose recipes (whether clipped from magazines/newspapers, handwritten, or digital); capturing LOTS of recipes from cookbooks would be a labor-intensive scanning effort, so if you're planning on keeping your cookbooks rather than scanning a small number of recipes and letting go of the books, Eat Your Books is a great option. I haven't blogged about them since 2011 (how's that for longevity for an app/platform?), but many of my clients have been happy to use it as a super-index for their cookbook-based recipe collections. Thus, I'd look at Eat Your Books as an option separate from whatever you use for the rest of your recipes.

[I'm assuming it's OK to link to my own posts for this purpose. Nobody would want me to copy two 3000-word posts into an AskMe answer!)
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 10:38 PM on November 16, 2022 [6 favorites]


Evernote was purchased today by Bending Spoons

Whaaaat?? I rely on Evernote as my second brain. I have half of my life in it, including recipes. BRB, off to export/backup everything I have in Evernote.
posted by gakiko at 1:22 AM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


I've been using AnyList for this purpose for years now, and it works well. There's a free app, but the premium version is only $10/year. You can import recipes from any website, search for recipe titles and ingredients, and share a grocery list.
posted by cozenedindigo at 3:55 AM on November 17, 2022


Seconding Copy Me That. You can manually enter recipes, but it's designed to save them from online sites with a single click - and that was the biggest appeal for me, is that when it saves the recipe, it saves JUST the recipe, and not any of the extraneous storytelling a lot of recipe sites use. It has a link back to the original page if you want to read that ever, but if you just want the recipes, there you are.

You can also tag a recipe with various descriptors or category settings you choose (a couple popular filters on my own account are "beans", "dessert for one", and "slow cooker", for instance). And - it even saves a recipe if a paywall pop-up is preventing you from reading it (I'm looking at YOU, New York Times).
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:12 AM on November 17, 2022


After many years, we switched from Paprika to Mela and like it a lot better. It imports Paprika databases (took a bit to import 3000+ recipes) and seems snappier and has a fresher design.
posted by VeniceGlass at 4:25 AM on November 17, 2022


Seconding Mela - on iPhone you can take a photo of a cookbook page and it will OCR everything and import it into its own database like magic. Importing recipes from websites is also super easy. They keep adding features. I love it.
posted by valleys at 4:33 AM on November 17, 2022


I was going to say I use and like Paprika and it's fine. It feels a bit old... I don't like relentless change for the sake of it but Paprika feels like it needs sprucing up. It also bugs me slightly that there's not a dedicated field for the author of the recipe. Maybe I'm picky.

I've been eyeing Mela so I'm pleased to hear others like it. If I was starting afresh I'd look at Mela first.
posted by fabius at 5:08 AM on November 17, 2022


I'll just mention tiddlywiki . It's not recipe specific but still meets most of your requirements:

* Likely to exist for a while - has been around for 18 years already.
* Good support for tags/searching
* Handles links just fine.

Other features:
* open source
* free
* easy to get started
* fun to use (just my opinion)
posted by metadave at 5:37 AM on November 17, 2022


From my previous question on this topic, I got the app Recipe Keeper. Free to something like 12 or 25 recipes, then a one time $10 charge for unlimited recipes. I really like it.

It doesn't have "tags" per set, but it has "Categories" and "Collections" and you can add to (or delete from) the default lists.

I love that it can easily scale recipes, and the OCR is pretty good for importing from PDFs or photos. You also have a chance to edit the text before saving, or later.

You can share particular recipes or collections of recipes, though I haven't done this much.

btw I have discovered that many recipes from not-too-old books, or even some older ones, are also online now, which makes importing somewhat easier.
posted by 2 cats in the yard at 6:26 AM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


I have been using Evernote for probably a decade? Maybe more? I have no sense of time anymore. I had not heard about the sale but I will be bereft if something changes, because Evernote is also my brain and my recipe box. My next planned long-term project is photographing all my mother and grandmother's recipe cards into Evernote.

I chose Evernote for pretty much all the reasons you ask, and decided that newer smaller products were more likely to go away, and I plan to stay there until forced to find another solution.
posted by Lyn Never at 7:13 AM on November 17, 2022


I have been using Paprika for a while, and I like it, but now I'm intrigued by Mela.
posted by adamrice at 7:47 AM on November 17, 2022


If you’re an iOS / macOS user I would suggest the Notes app as an improvement over Evernote while keeping that degree of flexibility.

Detecting and searching on text in photos is supported, so you can take snapshots of recipes from cookbooks and have full use of them.

There is support for sharing (I believe both individual docs and whole folders) and tagging is now supported as well. Tagging is a relatively recent addition so there may still be some functionality yet to build out for robust support.
posted by sesquipedalia at 8:33 AM on November 17, 2022


This is what I do: Simplenote app for text based recipes: these tend to be my favorites/repeat meals. It's worth it to me to type them out. This allows tagging and is web and app based so I can easily check when I'm at the store. I do use Evernote (free version) to "scan" pages from cookbooks. I like this for full text search. I don't like it because I am limited to a certain amount of uploads a month and if I'm doing a lot at a time I'll go over. Finally, I made a Google Custom Search engine for websites I actually like and am able to confine searches to just those sites.
posted by lolibrarian at 11:18 AM on November 17, 2022


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