[HN Gopher] Opensource.cooking: A simple, bloat-free cooking site
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       Opensource.cooking: A simple, bloat-free cooking site
        
       Author : locua
       Score  : 69 points
       Date   : 2021-04-07 17:05 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (opensource.cooking)
 (TXT) w3m dump (opensource.cooking)
        
       | yepthatsreality wrote:
       | The evergreen Internet website idea.
        
       | thrower123 wrote:
       | People love to slag on recipe sites, and most of them are
       | terrible, but the platonic ideal of the recipe site already
       | exists. It's AllRecipes, provided you have UBlock Origin enabled.
       | Even if you don't, the printer version of their recipes is
       | perfect, and exactly what I would want.
       | 
       | Example: -> https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/242040/egg-salad-
       | with-chop...
        
       | linsomniac wrote:
       | Maybe 6 months ago a previous discussion here led me to Paprika,
       | an Android/iOS app, and I've been loving it. It is a paid app,
       | $5, IIRC.
       | 
       | The killer feature is that you can be on a recipe in the browser
       | and do "Share", pick Paprika, and it'll grab, almost without
       | fail, the recipe from within the pages and pages of prose that
       | most recipes have these days.
       | 
       | I also use the sharing so my wife has access to the same recipe
       | set, though she doesn't use it as much as I do. I use the Photos
       | feature, and also take notes about how it comes out if I want to
       | make changes.
        
       | aimor wrote:
       | In general I've given up on recipe aggregate sites. I have to be
       | half-familiar with the dish just to fix all the things wrong with
       | the recipes I find. In my opinion, divorcing the recipe from the
       | curator is a huge mistake and no amount of user reviews overcomes
       | this. What I really want to see are the recipes that some
       | specific person actually makes in their daily life. Not icons who
       | publish more recipes under their name than a single person could
       | make in a lifetime, or test kitchens obsessed with creating the
       | scientifically proven ideal form of a chocolate chip cookie, and
       | definitely not bloggers churning out stories to grow an audience.
       | I want John, who likes to cook, to let me leaf around in his
       | recipe box (the one he actually uses), and if I make a dish and
       | like it I want to be able to go back and dig around for more. I
       | know this authenticity exists online, but I don't know how to
       | find it. I imagine it as a big list of personal recipe box
       | websites.
        
         | samdafi wrote:
         | Shameless plug but I tried to do that at
         | https://www.sammakesfood.com. I made videos for the recipes
         | too, but you do not have to watch those. It was a hobby project
         | (not monetized) so no garbage. If somebody did this with maybe
         | 30-75 mainstays and added search, is that kinda what you're
         | looking for? I stopped because I wasn't sure if it would help
         | anybody. My family enjoyed the videos during the pandemic as an
         | alternate way to see me though, so, still worth it :D
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | qznc wrote:
       | What is Open Source about it? Could not find license or anything.
        
       | megous wrote:
       | What is needed are cooking methods and a general sense of what
       | combines well with what and in what proportions. Once you learn
       | those, you can apply them to anything. Recipes are maybe useful
       | for baking, where precise portions matter somewhat more (but you
       | can get away with a lot there too), or for people who want to
       | reproduce some particular food.
       | 
       | But, it's not like you're trying to create a restaurant that may
       | need good reproducibility of outcomes. Most home based cooks just
       | want to feed themselves and their families and have some
       | variability, and for the food to taste reasonably well.
       | 
       | Buying ingredients also gets less frustrating, because you don't
       | need a precise list, just a general idea of what you want to make
       | that day.
       | 
       | There are even books that help you discover taste affinities for
       | ingredients.
        
       | egeozcan wrote:
       | I see some other open source recipe attempts but I could not find
       | the source of this site. Am I getting it wrong?
       | 
       | https://duckduckgo.com/?q=opensource.cooking
        
       | jabo wrote:
       | I recently built a recipe search site that lets you filter by
       | ingredients: https://recipe-search.typesense.org/
       | 
       | OP - if you have a JSON export of the data, I'd love to include
       | it in the index.
        
       | douglasquaid84 wrote:
       | Is this not a clone of based.cooking?
        
       | jarrell_mark wrote:
       | Open source is nice but these recipes need to be stored on the
       | blockchain
        
         | JackFr wrote:
         | Wanna buy the NFT for my chocolate chip cookies?
        
           | dguaraglia wrote:
           | You laugh, but I've heard that NFTs _taste better than the
           | actual cookies they vaguely represent in JSON form_.
        
       | ShaneMcGowan wrote:
       | https://based.cooking is also a similar site
        
       | cratermoon wrote:
       | Isn't this just https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26419717
       | reskinned?
        
         | d_theorist wrote:
         | Definitely looks like it.
        
         | challengly wrote:
         | Probably literally using their source code, but not linking
         | back to it?
         | 
         | https://github.com/lukesmithxyz/based.cooking
        
           | domdev wrote:
           | https://github.com/locua/based.cooking
           | 
           | Their github with their fork of that repo.
        
         | lupire wrote:
         | Well, they added a donation feature to make money. Hacker
         | style!
        
       | hardwaregeek wrote:
       | Haha adding garlic to carbonara. That'll get you some angry
       | Italian comments.
       | 
       | As I mentioned before[1], I'm skeptical of this premise. Recipes
       | are hard to get right, hence the use of cross testers and
       | standardized language in professional test kitchens.
       | 
       | [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26420783
        
       | jlkuester7 wrote:
       | Very nice!
       | 
       | Most recipe websites these days are horrible (poor layout,
       | annoying popups/popovers, crazy amounts of content that have
       | little or nothing to do with the recipe....). The minimalism of
       | this website is refreshing. I only wish the website itself was
       | also open source. It would be pretty cool to be able to
       | collaborate on and enhance the site (and a SCM hosting platform
       | like GitHub or GitLab would provide a built-in way for
       | maintainers to evaluate new recipe submissions, etc.)
        
         | benjaminclauss wrote:
         | I have been thinking about how to solve this problem a lot
         | lately. With the pandemic, I have been learning more recipes at
         | home. I too share the frustration of browsing a recipe website
         | and then getting a 7 paragraph story behind it. Just give me
         | the recipe!
         | 
         | started uploading some personal recipes to
         | https://benjaminclauss.github.io/minimalchef/ with Hugo (PR's
         | welcome) but this definitely will not scale
         | 
         | I would definitely use a Strava for Cooking.
        
         | fersarr wrote:
         | open source ++
        
       | fersarr wrote:
       | hmm someone is messing it up already, I think. Spaghetti
       | carbonara is under the tag 'banana'
        
         | banana_giraffe wrote:
         | And Spaghetti carbonara apparently involves no cook time at
         | all.
        
         | a2tech wrote:
         | And submitting recipes is throwing an nginx error
        
         | primis wrote:
         | Would be nice to be able to tag vote to be able to fix
         | something like this
        
       | TheAdamAndChe wrote:
       | Cool! Looks fun. What exactly is open source on the site? Is it
       | the recipes? If so, then what license do they use? Is there any
       | disclaimer of that on submission?
       | 
       | I'm not dissing, just making sure your ducks are in a row. It's a
       | fun idea!
        
         | cratermoon wrote:
         | Recipes cannot be copyrighted.
        
           | neaden wrote:
           | The recipe itself can't be, but you can't just copy and paste
           | recipe text from one website to another.
        
           | D13Fd wrote:
           | Wrong. Lists of ingredients cannot be copyrighted. But the
           | accompanying explanation can be copyrighted if it is
           | substantial enough:
           | 
           | https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html
           | 
           | Beyond the recipes themselves, the collection may be
           | copyrighted.
           | 
           | The photos accompanying the recipes are also copyrighted.
        
       | tyingq wrote:
       | Is is the code, formatting, etc, that we're supposed to be
       | looking at? Or the data itself?
       | 
       | The data catches my eye because there seems to be quite a lot of
       | bad data. Recipes with cooking time of 0, when it's clear that's
       | not true. Typos like "Spahetti Carbonara". "Ham Sandwich" tagged
       | as "Fruit".
       | 
       | If we're supposed to ignore all that and just evaluate the CMS
       | bit, it looks fine. But it doesn't seem very specific to cooking.
       | Just tag organized text.
        
       | k2enemy wrote:
       | Thank you for the effort! You might consider using the recipe
       | schema [0] for better interoperability with other recipe
       | managers.
       | 
       | [0] https://schema.org/Recipe
        
       | mongol wrote:
       | I think the ideal recipe website starts from well known dishes
       | where each recipe is associated as a variant of a famous dish.
       | There is no true Swedish meatballs recipe, so the heading
       | "Swedish meatballs" should not have a recipe, it should have
       | several. And then some kind of rating system should bubble the
       | best ones to top.
        
       | lggy wrote:
       | I have been working on https://pancakes.cloud for the same
       | reasons. No prose, strong sense of community and the recipes
       | being just plaintext in the end. However, without good
       | contributions, I don't think any such site can thrive.
        
       | doersino wrote:
       | Very neat!
       | 
       | I've recently taken a stab at something like this, too - the
       | result is a Pandoc-and-Bash-script-based static site generator
       | for my personal recipe collection. Recipes are written in a
       | format based on Markdown (with ingredients listed separately for
       | each step, which comes in real handy while cooking), and the end
       | result is a lightweight, responsive, searchable website. I've
       | received very positive feedback when I shared it as a "Show HN" a
       | week and a half ago.
       | 
       | It's available as open source here:
       | https://github.com/doersino/nyum
       | 
       | There's also a demo:
       | https://doersino.github.io/nyum/_site/index.html
       | 
       | Finally, here's what the Markdown source for an example recipe
       | looks like:
       | https://raw.githubusercontent.com/doersino/nyum/main/_recipe...
        
       | uhtred wrote:
       | I think it needs some way for users to rate the recipes,
       | otherwise I have no way of knowing which recipes are worth trying
       | out. Trouble is you then are in the realm of having registered
       | users, and life becomes no fun anymore.
        
       | neaden wrote:
       | So as someone who cooks a lot, and gets frustrated by long blog
       | like posts that lots of recipes have this day, this website is
       | probably even less useful for me. The tagging system isn't being
       | used correctly, Ham Sandwich is tagged with Banana for some
       | reason. Speaking of Ham sandwich some of the recipes are just way
       | too simple, this just tells me how to assemble a sandwich which I
       | don't think anyone really needs. Those are issues that can be
       | solved long term, the other thing that will cause a problem long
       | term is once this site starts getting repeat recipes. The blog
       | like start to recipes may be annoying, but at least it sometimes
       | helps you understand the decisions different people make for
       | their recipes, or suggest substitutions/modifications.
       | 
       | Edit: The Spaghetti Carbonara recipe actually has multiple
       | mistakes. it says the cook time is 0 minutes, it tells you to add
       | the beaten eggs but never tells you to beat them, the recipe
       | includes butter as an ingredient but the recipe tells you to heat
       | the oil, and never says to grate the cheese. If this was a wiki
       | or something I could try to fix those issues, but as it currently
       | is I don't see any way to even flag it. It's also tagged as
       | Banana and Greasy.
        
         | peter_retief wrote:
         | Yes it really does need some work. There is a need for a simple
         | well curated recipe site though, there is always lots of
         | interest.
        
           | JackFr wrote:
           | I've found nothing better than the NYT Cooking site. High
           | quality recipes well indexed, well formatted. Not
           | ridiculously overwhelmed with ads.
           | 
           | Alas, not free -- but for my money, well worth it.
        
           | moehm wrote:
           | Honest question: What is your problem with traditional
           | cookbooks like "Le guide culinaire"[0]? They are a curated
           | source of recipes which stood the test of time.
           | 
           | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_guide_culinaire
        
             | JackFr wrote:
             | Not OP, but I've got no problem with them. In fact given
             | how bad most recipe websites are, I've largely returned to
             | them.
        
           | vanilla-almond wrote:
           | " _There is a need for a simple well curated recipe site
           | though, there is always lots of interest_ "
           | 
           | Does BBC Food count? It's ad-free if you are in the UK
           | (possibly not if you're outside the UK). It has a wealth of
           | recipes and food-related content:
           | 
           | https://www.bbc.co.uk/food
        
         | debruinf wrote:
         | I think crowd sourced recipes never work. Apart from obvious
         | mistakes, a recipe is a very personal thing: how you describe
         | steps, what ingredients, your cooking setup/hardware, what
         | instruction you need, what ingredients are available etc. I
         | recently did a Show HN[0] for a different approach: a private
         | kitchen notebook to accommodate exactly this, your recipes.
         | 
         | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26609394
        
         | angio wrote:
         | The carborana recipe also includes garlic which I'm not saying
         | is wrong, but it's not standard. Also carbonara has neither
         | butter nor oil.
        
         | duxup wrote:
         | I just started moving my recipes all to ... github.
         | 
         | I find it easier to manage a bunch of markdown files than
         | anything else.
         | 
         | Also rewriting them lets me list ingredients as groups as far
         | as what goes together in a bowl or whatever ...the laundry list
         | of ingredients so many sites list drives me crazy.
         | 
         | Outside of America's Test Kitchen... I've never found a blog's
         | exposition on why they did what they did helpful. More often
         | than not their description actually makes me question if they
         | actually cooked the recipe often enough (or at all).
        
           | ehutch79 wrote:
           | The long blog format is for SEO purposes
        
         | slow_donkey wrote:
         | I'm building a search engine for this exact issue - there's
         | 10000 recipes for every dish but they have to be
         | contextualized: Do I want mac and cheese in the next 30 minutes
         | or am I serving this for Thanksgiving? Those are 2 different
         | experiences and recipes.
         | 
         | Even the base issue of at least ranking recipe blogs by quality
         | isn't solved by other aggregators such as Google / Yummly which
         | are more of a recipe dump.
         | 
         | If you or anyone else is interested I'm planning to release a
         | version in the coming weeks - email is in profile.
        
         | danpalmer wrote:
         | > The Spaghetti Carbonara recipe actually has multiple mistakes
         | 
         | One of them being that it's called "Spahetti Carbonara".
         | 
         | Separately, the recipe calls for whole eggs rather than egg
         | yolks. This is a somewhat contentious issue, and many chefs
         | have opinions one way or another. This recipe appears like it's
         | The Definitive Spa(g)hetti Carbonara, but doesn't acknowledge
         | that many consider it to be incorrect.
         | 
         | For me this is an issue with all recipe sites - my level of
         | cooking ability, my ingredient preferences, how "authentic" I
         | want to be, opinions I've formed on particular dishes - these
         | are all very personal to me and unlikely to be fully
         | represented in recipe sites.
         | 
         | I've started keeping my own recipe collection comprised of
         | recipes I've made and enjoyed, I make no attempt to make them
         | publishable, and I edit them as much as I feel necessary.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | smoe wrote:
           | I think it is a bit less of an issue for normal cooking site,
           | where it may say "Bob's Spahetti Carbonara". Whether it is
           | authentic or not doesn't really matter.
           | 
           | Whereas a site like this I reckon would aim for having
           | definite versions of recipes, which is a) I think impossible
           | for any dish and b) pretty much useless if you don't happen
           | to live in the exact region where it is from.
           | 
           | E.g. I have 3 different versions of the recipe for a Finnish
           | blueberry pie. The original (well nothing original about it,
           | just how my mother learned to make it), a Swiss version and a
           | Colombian one. Because for the latter two I need different
           | substitutes for the filling and slightly different
           | measurements and baking time over all.
           | 
           | For me, recipe sites are just a starting point and
           | inspiration for the personal collection. And I prefer having
           | many different versions, some traditional, some sacrilegious
           | available to compare and try rather than trying to get them
           | into a single lowest common denominator version.
        
         | dogma1138 wrote:
         | Buy a few good cooking books. Far better and more useful than
         | hunting on the internet.
         | 
         | And most importantly start your own recipe book.
        
       | pessimizer wrote:
       | I'd like a recipe site that included techniques at the same level
       | as ingredients, and steps of preparation expressed as functions
       | of techniques, utensils, and ingredients. Functional cooking.
       | 
       | If I don't have the technique or the pans, I don't need the
       | recipe to come up in a search.
        
       | tecuan wrote:
       | gods speed. Let me know when you have a keto tag.
        
       | seattle_spring wrote:
       | Tangentially related, but if I were to run for president I'd run
       | on a single issue platform: Imprison anyone involved with the
       | current state of online recipes. Want to write your 10 page life
       | story for baked mac & cheese? Boom, 5 years in the slammer. Want
       | to put 12 different ads on your recipe for baked Alaska Char? 10
       | year minimum sentence.
       | 
       | Involved in encouraging this behavior from the inside of Google?
       | Sorry bub, that's gonna be three consecutive life sentences.
        
         | morsch wrote:
         | Please, Mr. President, carve out an exception for folks like
         | the serious eats crew, who write genuinely useful culinary info
         | in the introduction of their recipes.
         | 
         | E.g.: _This classic bechamel-based mac and cheese is loaded to
         | the hilt with cheese. Not only do we pack as much cheese as we
         | can into the sauce itself, but we then mix the cooked pasta and
         | cheese sauce with additional grated cheese, for tiny pockets of
         | stretchy, melty bits throughout. One of the benefits of this
         | method is that you can get enhanced browning in the oven,
         | especially on the bottom and sides of the baking dish, thanks
         | to the flour and butter in the sauce._ (it goes on)
         | 
         | https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/11/classic-bechamel...
        
         | bluefirebrand wrote:
         | I'd vote for this, this is truly the most pressing issue of our
         | time.
        
         | acomjean wrote:
         | Weirdly recipes aren't copyrightable..
         | 
         | But personal stories are, And descriptive text is too. Probably
         | why they're added.
         | 
         | I'll agree about the ads. Thus we signed up for platejoy (YC
         | 2017?)
        
           | HaloZero wrote:
           | Platejoy sounded like what I want but they don't even list
           | the price of their service on their site which seems sketch.
        
             | robotpony wrote:
             | The price isn't even that bad, but it produces so much more
             | packaging waste than cooking from scratch. We enjoyed the
             | recipes, the price was good enough, but our recycling load
             | doubled or more.
        
         | yurielt wrote:
         | Well you have h my vote ( and my axe)
        
       | sto_hristo wrote:
       | A fruit banana ham sandwich. Maybe add a upvote/downvote
       | functionality so that such things can be send to the bottom.
        
       | kslacroix wrote:
       | Here's another one https://based.cooking/ who's also open soruce.
       | You can submit recipes with PRs
       | https://github.com/lukesmithxyz/based.cooking
        
       | axaxs wrote:
       | There's been a load of these on HN over the last few months.
       | 
       | While I applaud the efforts (truly!), I hope the community can
       | get behind one.
       | 
       | Where I sit, I don't want to sit and type out my wife's recipes
       | on a site that'll be gone in a year. So I'll wait.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | SavantIdiot wrote:
       | I really wish a curated site existed with the intent of the
       | author, but there is more to this than just putting up a database
       | and letting everyone pile on.
       | 
       | This site, started in 1999, attempted OP's goals:
       | 
       | https://foodgeeks.com/
       | 
       | ... it was probably one of my fave sites for years that was
       | actively curated, but it took a LOT of time to keep healthy.
       | 
       | I appreciate the effort, but this isn't as easy as it looks.
        
       | zaptheimpaler wrote:
       | Content is king..
        
       | markdown wrote:
       | There's a recipe on your site called Refried Beans. I've never
       | heard of that dish, but in any case, either the recipe is wrong,
       | or the name is. The recipe only calls for frying the beans once.
        
         | mattkrause wrote:
         | It's a false cognate for the Spanish 'frijoles refritos'.
         | 
         | Frito = fried, but re is an "intensifier" that can mean "done
         | again" but may also mean "done thoroughly" or even "in excess".
         | Thus, they are beans that have been fried thoroughly.
        
         | Tomte wrote:
         | From Wikipedia:
         | 
         | > As described by Rick Bayless, "they're refritos--not fried
         | again, as you might assume, but "well fried" or "intensely
         | fried," as that re translates from Spanish.
        
       | buzz27 wrote:
       | I still use the old Berkeley SOAR archive (which is now at
       | recipesource.com).
        
       | racl101 wrote:
       | No fucking stories about how grandma used to make this dish
       | before Poland was invaded and the entire history thereafter
       | before we even get to the ingredients!
       | 
       | I'm am down!
        
       | peter_retief wrote:
       | I see a ham sandwich under fruit?
        
       | flatiron wrote:
       | I've always wanted to make a GitHub for recipes. You can fork
       | recipes. Submit pull requests. Public and private repositories.
       | Versioning and commit history. Share with friends, Etc.
        
         | jka wrote:
         | You may be in luck:
         | 
         | - https://www.cinc.kitchen/
         | 
         | - https://github.com/lukesmithxyz/based.cooking/ (which the
         | submitted site may be derived from?)
        
           | flatiron wrote:
           | That looks like a recipe site inside GitHub. What I wanted to
           | make is a standalone website with git like branching and
           | such. Everyone has their own little twist on recipes. I think
           | it would be fun! I just need the time!
        
             | jka wrote:
             | Try the first link :)
        
         | dan1234 wrote:
         | That sounds like something I'd use. Especially if it could
         | convert between American and metric units.
        
         | banana_giraffe wrote:
         | I have a little pet project from a long time ago that I tried
         | to start with this, it lets me describe recipes like this:
         | Recipe|Turkey Stuffing         I|4 C==French bread hand torn
         | into small pieces (about 1/4 inch pieces)         I|3/4
         | C==Butter         I|3/4 C==Onion (minced)         I|1 C==Celery
         | I|1 Tbsp==Salt (less if bird is butterball or self basting)
         | I|pinch==Pepper         I|2 Tbsp==Sage, thyme, and marjoram
         | mixture         D|Melt butter in large skillet over low heat
         | D|Add onion and celery & spices, stirring often until it all
         | smells great.         D|Pour 1/3 of the hot mixture over all
         | the bread, then toss, then 1/3 more, toss, then last 1/3 and
         | toss.
         | 
         | From there it can produce a pretty webpage to view the recipe,
         | or produce an ingredient list for shopping (and it has some
         | basic concept of combining shopping lists sanely), and lets me
         | search by ingredient.
         | 
         | I always debate fleshing it out. 99% of the time spent with
         | something like this is curating the recipes themselves, which
         | I'm far from an expert in, and I don't want it to become a big
         | time waster.
        
           | robotpony wrote:
           | I used Markdown for recipes for more than a decade, where UL
           | were ingredients, OL were steps, and you could use as many
           | sets of both as needed. With some CSS and JS it worked pretty
           | well, but wasn't super accessible for family members to add
           | recipes to (but was great for me).
        
       | kampsun wrote:
       | This reminds me that there's also recipes in Wikibooks.
       | https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Table_of_Contents
       | https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Category:Recipes
       | 
       | I also usually get good results with recipes from Serious
       | Eats[1], I also find that the in depth articles go into reasons
       | behind the recipes, really help with knowing the "why", not only
       | the "how".
       | 
       | 1. https://www.seriouseats.com/
        
       | memset wrote:
       | (Semi related: I maintain plainoldrecipe.com, which makes it easy
       | to create printable plain text versions of recipes online)
        
       | [deleted]
        
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       (page generated 2021-04-07 23:01 UTC)