Thanks. I can't figure out how to look at the markdown. I made an account figuring that'd let me edit (so I can view), but the protections apparently have another level.
So, are the components different files? That'd definitely help if there's a component that applies to several recipes, like a sauce or crust. However, it could make things more complicated than some would like if they're working on a smaller project, like a reference notebook or a family cookbook.
> I made an account figuring that'd let me edit (so I can view), but the protections apparently have another level.
Thanks for making an account! You can only edit you own recipes, but I (the admin) can edit any recipe. I guess you tried to edit a recipe you liked, would you like a "Copy and Edit Recipe" feature?
> So, are the components different files?
Components are what CookTime recipes are made of. A recipe has at least one component, and if necessary the author can add additional components to indicate different ingredient quantities for different components. I have thought about having re-usable components across recipes, I just haven't given thought to how to design the UX for it. Glad to hear that someone else would find it useful, I think I'll reprioritize this.
> I can't figure out how to look at the markdown.
In CookTime there isn't a simple textual representation of a recipe (unless you count the big JSON object the browser sends over the wire.). The backend is a relational database of recipes, components, ingredient requirements, nutrition data, etc...
> Power vs simplicity is often a balancing act.
100%, my primary user is my mother-in-law and I have to be extra careful to make everything easy to use for an enthusiastic retiree.
Since you seem to know this space. I'm interested in something people must be working on. I want something that is ingredient property oriented. Examples would be starch, antihistamine, and cultural usage.
The idea would be a recipe generator the uses taste profiles, food textures, but has no standard ingredients. If one only had taro root for flour all recipes would sub that in...
I'm not aware of a specific service to do what you're describing. The closest I can think of is IBM's Watson demo for recipe creation[1].
Can you tell me more about what you're looking for? CookTime's recipe object modeling is very flexible, maybe I can make what you're looking for in a generic way.
I will check out Watson. I'm really just looking to tag ingredients. I could always create my own tag standards for the what I'm curious about.
I have read through this thread to try to make myself more articulate.
I guess I'm thinking of it as an ingredient centered approach. The recipe is secondary to whatever is available. The idea would be the ingredients would have tags for properties. The properties would be the nutritional content, cultural references, mouth feel, taste profile, allergens, ...
The combining of ingredients might have less to do with recipes and more to do with necessities and circumstances.
The flour example is probably the most illustrative. Many grains and roots can be used as flour. If one was using taro root flour all recipes would just accommodate that substitution.
This is an interesting and complicated set of problems. It's similar to problems in the LLM & social network spaces. You have several dimensions, like recipes, ingredients, nutrition, cultural context, etc, and you have gradients to help determine recommendations, which points to a graph DB. But you also have rules when it comes to substitutions (not every substitution is appropriate for every situation), and you might have rules on other dimensions as well. That points to a layer of business logic. But to serve recommendations performantly, you might want to run rules upon writes or on a schedule to persist the results to the DB. Either that or do some sophisticated caching.
So, are the components different files? That'd definitely help if there's a component that applies to several recipes, like a sauce or crust. However, it could make things more complicated than some would like if they're working on a smaller project, like a reference notebook or a family cookbook.
Power vs simplicity is often a balancing act.