[jackbrookes]

This reads a bit like like a pre-PC take: "Why use a computer when a cookbook works fine?"

Imagine it’s 1992:

Cookbook: Open book, follow steps.

PC: Turn on tower, wait for DOS, fiddle with floppies, pray the printer works, hope the shareware recipe isn’t weird.

Not saying you're wrong but its easy to miss the big picture

[aembleton]

> "Why use a computer when a cookbook works fine?"

I still feel that way. I have cookbooks because I find the UX better than searching for recipes.

[wpm]

So I can read the 20,000 story about how the author was told this recipe by their brothers husbands step-grandmother while vacationing at the lake house with their golden retriever named Max before I can get to the recipe.

[atrus]

While this joke is never mentioned and is hilarious every time, you'd be hard pressed to find a recipe site that didn't have either a "print" or "go to recipe" button at the top.

[pavel_lishin]

Right, but we're in the 1992 of these glasses. Maybe they'll be good eventually. They aren't now.

And frankly, even the online recipe experience leaves much to be desired. Skip past the blog post. Skip past the list of ingredients. Skip past another blog post. Find the single statblock on the bottom that lists ingredients & amounts, & instructions - hoping that it exists.

Like other commenters, I've also started going back to paper cookbooks.

[rs186]

Not the same.

Internet and recipe websites solve a real problem: accessing recipes was expensive and not easy

AR headsets don't solve any problems. If anything, they make up a nonexistent problem, attempts but fails to solve the problem, during which the experience becomes even worse.

[aylmao]

I mean, depends on how you describe it. One could easily say:

Phone method:

* Find phone

* Search for the right app, before finding the right recipe

* Leave my phone on counter, constantly having to move it as I move plates, pans etc.

* Wash and dry hands after each step, before unlocking phone

* Clean it every time gunk gets to it

Meta glasses:

* They're already on, just ask for recipe

* No need to ever wash/dry hands, move a device around, or clean it since one can easily unlock it without touching it

Right? Similarly with cookbooks, the best case is great and the worst case is terrible. There's a reason there's a market for recipe websites, cookbooks, etc.

[48terry]

Okay. Now: Imagine it's 2025:

Cookbook: Open book, follow steps.

New gadget from mult-billion dollar company: showcases on a live demonstration that it's a broken piece of crap that doesn't work.

Like, are we forgetting that it didn't work? It sucked at the job! Let's not what-if or have some imaginary "okay, but pretend it's actually good," deal here. It was bad!

[0x457]

No? Because traditional cookbook (paper or digital) is deterministic and LLMs are not.

[endymion-light]

honestly cookbooks genuinely are better

i got the art of italian cooking recently and it's genuinely far easier to get a recipe than trying to scroll through a 50 page monologue about the intracicies of someones childhood before even listing the ingredients

[rhetocj23]

Indeed. There is an element of trust with an actual cookbook - it signals quality.

The internet over time has been riddled with junk, especially since the cost of production of information is just your opportunity cost of time. Even that is going away with the use of LLMs....

[endymion-light]

Core issue within the content age that I don't see being readily resolved. Unfortunately, I think the SEO marketing crowd are slowly catching up with LLMs, which is leading to poorer actual output when attempting to get information.

In the same way that google search used to be amazing before it was taken over by optimization, I think we're seeing a mass influx of content production to attempt to integrate itself into training corpus.

[rhetocj23]

TBH I for one am glad about this.

I have always believed there is a cost borne to get the best of something. This means a sacrifice is entailed. Theres something very important about this re. the culture - a culture in which everything is free is how you get crap stuff produced. And people settle for crap stuff just because its free.

People who can see the bigger picture when you have this, can see the dangers of it.

[makeitdouble]

To note, you can buy the recipes and skip the dumpster internet or register to a site like cookpad. At this point even YouTube is a decent place for that.

I agree random recipes are hell on the internet, but it's also not something we're forced into if we care any bit about recipes in the first replace.