Help me manage my recipes

July 3, 2006 12:58 PM

Recipe software filter: I'm looking for a software/web service that will allow me to store recipes and collections

I'm a dinner party fiend and I experiment a lot with my cooking. Every now and then I hit upon the perfect combination of dishes and I like to remember them (much like a playlist). Is there any good recipe management software out there that will let me do this? I've tried file folders but that never works for me (since I travel a lot). This one is exactly what I need but alas, its for a mac. The best windows software I've seen so far is Big Oven but it doesnt do lists and the interface makes me fear the upcoming Y2K disaster.

Any ideas? I've seen this thread but its old and hopefully something new has come up since then.
I'm on Win XP.

posted by special-k to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

Couldn't find any web-based recipe holders, but download.com returns a number of options, here.
posted by ifranzen at 1:23 PM on July 3, 2006

There's a recipe-sharing site called snacksby on mefi projects where you could post your recipes. You'd be able to see just your recipes by going to your user page (example), though it doesn't seem to allow you to categorize them at all. I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but the site intrigued me.
posted by clarahamster at 1:45 PM on July 3, 2006

I use MasterCook Deluxe 9.0. I've been using it in its various Windows and Mac incarnations for more than 10 years.

It has some crappy interface issues, but works reliably, builds shopping lists, exports text and HTML, comes with a dozen or so entire cookbooks full of recipes, and so on.

The current software publisher doesn't do much with it, but it's a very mature piece of software.
posted by briank at 2:16 PM on July 3, 2006

Have you considered del.icio.us? Or better yet, a combination of Blogger and del.icio.us? You could start a free blog on blogger, on which you could post your own recipes, which you could then tag on del.icio.us. It also sounds like you want to keep track of menus which could also be done on blogger and then tagged with del.icio.us. I keep track of recipes this way and it works for me (see here to see how I do it). The advantage here is that it would be available from any computer. The only problem is shopping lists, but since I've found that most of the shopping list functions in actual recipe software is seriously flawed, I don't know how much it would matter.
posted by katyggls at 2:17 PM on July 3, 2006

I forgot to add the other advantage of the system above. It allows you to keep track of recipes from other websites along with your own.
posted by katyggls at 2:30 PM on July 3, 2006

Epicurious allows you to upload your own recipes, to choose whether to share them with others (or not), and to make a 'recipe box' of your own and/or others' recipes.
posted by bingo at 3:13 PM on July 3, 2006

this is now 100% on the snacksby to-do list.
posted by soma lkzx at 6:57 PM on July 3, 2006

Heh - I'm trying to decide whether to buy Big Oven, myself. (It's the only Windows recipe software that doesn't seem to still be pining for the days of Windows for Workgroups 3.1.)

I know you're looking elsewhere (interface/y2k worries?), but have you tried giving custom tags to recipes that work well together? Like, "@Beautiful Combo 1" and "@Beautiful Combo 2"?

Of course, you can only do that 50 times. Hm. If you're web-minded, perhaps exporting the desired combos to HTML? Or adding bogus ingredients for searching purposes (1 cup Dinner Party with Lindsey Buckingham)?
posted by Liffey at 11:20 PM on July 3, 2006

The Open Sauce looks promising (and has a geekalicious name)
posted by slightlybewildered at 2:49 PM on July 4, 2006

I love www.recipezaar.com.
I also have a binder with those plastic sheet liners with printed recipes (from Recipezaar and elsewhere on the internet) in them. When I use a recipe I take it out of the book and if it gets dirty I can just wipe it off in the plastic.
Recipezaar.com also offers multiple cookbooks and grocery checklists and a bunch of other benefits for something like $20? $25? a year. Worth it just to avoid the ads, too.
posted by daymented at 11:01 PM on July 7, 2006

A free, open source alternative for recipe management is Gourmet. It works both on Linux and Windows (although the Windows version has a few quirks). Even though it doesn't directly allow you to create menus, you can always assign a dish to several categories. Thus, a dish can be tagged both with "Entree" and "Fancy Menu #1", and then you can use a search for items with category "Fancy Menu #1" to display your shiny menu.
posted by irian at 10:46 PM on September 19, 2006

>>have you tried giving custom tags to recipes that work well together? Like, "@Beautiful Combo 1" and "@Beautiful Combo 2"? Of course, you can only do that 50 times.

Actually, that's not true. The number of tags you can assign in BigOven is unlimited. (It's just that the shortcut list of tags is 50 big.)

Note too that BigOven lets you post recipes to your own chef page online.
posted by stevemur at 6:58 PM on November 30, 2006