[HN Gopher] Why are online recipes so long-winded?
___________________________________________________________________
Why are online recipes so long-winded?
Author : 4monthsaway
Score : 139 points
Date : 2023-02-01 14:52 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jjpryor.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jjpryor.substack.com)
| newobj wrote:
| Get the Paprika 3 app, it's amazing. You can put in a irl and it
| scrapes the ingredients and directions and stores them locally.
| baud147258 wrote:
| I'm finding weird that it's not the case for recipes in French...
| Like the first result for 'soupe a l'oignon' on google is this
| one: https://www.marmiton.org/recettes/recette_soupe-a-l-
| oignon_1... and it's similar for all the recipes I search for
| online (in French). It's full of ads and sponsored content, but
| the recipe is ingredient list and instructions.
|
| Maybe it's because all the recipes seem to be concentrated on a
| handful of big websites with thousands of recipes, which fits
| with part '#3. It's a business' of the article.
| byronic wrote:
| I got so mad about this exact behavior that I started an
| (occasionally-updated) git repository with no-cruft recipes.
| https://github.com/byronic/recipes
| yibg wrote:
| Interestingly I noticed this a while ago and in talking to some
| friends it seems this is less of a problem in some other
| languages. For example Chinese recipes and Thai receipes (in
| Chinese and Thai) seem to get straight to the point. Where as
| most English recipes I find on google takes page 3 to get to the
| meat of it.
| kazinator wrote:
| To keep your eyes on the page longer so you are exposed to ads
| more.
| rogerbinns wrote:
| Plain recipes have no copyright protection[1]. The other
| surrounding text does have copyright protection, so any recipe
| publisher needs to have additional text and to be able to detect
| if someone else has copied it.
|
| [1] https://www.copyrightlaws.com/copyright-protection-recipes/
| jxdxbx wrote:
| Recipes as in the steps to cook something, the algorithm, the
| steps and amounts and ingredients are not copyrightable.
|
| The TEXT of a recipe is, at least to the extent it is minimally
| creative.
| SamBam wrote:
| This is the answer that is always trotted out, but it's unclear
| whether there is any truth to it being the reason bloggers
| actually add the stories. Heck, if that were the reason they
| wouldn't need three pages of content they could have a single
| paragraph, it would come to the same thing. It never made any
| sense to me that recipe bloggers would need to resort to
| putting pages upon pages of detailed life history in every
| single post, just on the off chance that someone is going to
| steal _their_ meatloaf recipe and re-post it on another blog.
|
| I was glad the OP article didn't mention that theory.
|
| I actually really believe that reason #1 in the article was the
| origin -- people actually liked reading the stories. When
| recipe blogs were new, and there were fewer of them, it was
| common to actually check back on the blogs and see if they had
| posted new content. I used to follow a number of recipe blogs,
| including Orangette, which I really liked, and would both read
| her stories and try her recipes. She (like similar bloggers)
| developed enough of a following that she was then hired by the
| Times to write similar recipes and stories.
|
| Heck, speaking of the Times, or other newspapers, they almost
| always intro a recipe with a story of some kind. This is not
| just for copyright reasons, but because people actually read
| them. (e.g. [1])
|
| This audience is different from the one who just googles
| "Meatloaf recipe" and clicks on the one with the most stars.
| When you do that, then no, you generally don't want to hear the
| "life story." But maybe some readers do read it, it connects
| with them, and then they actually go back to that same site
| again.
|
| 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/dining/citrus-salad-
| almon...
| nofreelunch wrote:
| Huh? How does it protect my recipe if somebody takes just the
| recipe and sticks a different garbage story on the front end?
| Recipes as intellectual property is a stupid idea in the first
| place, but this seems like faulty logic here.
| jerf wrote:
| Well, if the bulk of the "value" of your page is the garbage
| story, it protects the bulk of the value just fine....
| ravenstine wrote:
| Nearly everything online today is long-winded. Hell, most media
| is long-winded. You can't just know what happened, where, and
| why; you've got to read a creative-writing thesis to "put you in
| the shoes" of the subject du jour. You can't simply watch a
| lecture; you need fancy graphics and fast cuts with memes woven
| in. Want a compelling story? You better watch all 6 seasons,
| including the remaining 4 without the original writers, and be
| prepared to be disappointed. How about learning to fix your car?
| In that case, be prepared for 3 minutes worth of info in 20
| minutes of some schmo complaining about why Hyundais suck while
| he constantly jiggles the camera and gloats about much more
| clever he is than other mechanics.
|
| News, blogs, recipes, shows, instructional videos... all pretty
| much blow chunks. Any time I simply want straight forward
| information it becomes a matter of frequent fast-forwarding and
| combining of info from disparate sources when it shouldn't be
| necessary. Get. To. The. Point.
| kirkules wrote:
| It's easy to think all of the things you wanted to say were
| important, so you leave them in. But often they weren't so
| important to your eventual audience.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Honestly I think this is part of the reason why Twitter was so
| successful for so long. The rest of the internet has become so
| padded for length (even streaming TV content -- how many shows
| have you watched where you thought "this would be better as a
| movie"?) one platform that demands you focus on being short,
| punchy, and getting straight to the point would obviously
| ascend.
| kibwen wrote:
| And instead people make tweetchains a dozen long, making
| Twitter the worst of all worlds. It got better when they
| raised the cap from 140, but it's still too low to saying
| anything of substance or nuance.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Yes, but tweetchains are notable in that they're exceptions
| to the normal flow of chatter on twitter. And a good
| tweetchain will have people retweeting-out the good parts.
|
| Should every site be twitter? Hell no. But is it a good
| thing that one or two major social media sites demand
| brevity and distilling your thoughts? Yes.
| jedberg wrote:
| The irony of a long blog post about this is not lost on me. The
| answer is simple:
|
| "SEO. Google favors longer pages with unique content. If you just
| put the recipe it would look just like every other recipe on
| every other page".
| [deleted]
| erybodyknows wrote:
| A misalignment of incentives. Recipe sites want you to stay on
| the site for as long as possible, to serve you as many ads as
| possible, as this increases their income. Providing you with a
| clear recipe is not their primary goal.
| resuresu wrote:
| based.cooking
| rreichel03 wrote:
| I found that this was particularly notable while browsing on my
| phone so I built an iOS app extension [1] a year ago that
| attempts to fix this! Its not perfect and always a WIP, but its
| made my friends and family's lives a lot easier.
|
| [1]. https://recipereader.reichel.dev
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| Speaking as someone who likes to cook, and hates wading through
| pages of SEO bait to find the actual recipe, it seems like in
| principle it wouldn't be too hard to write a search engine
| specialized for recipes that heavily penalizes longwindedness.
| worldofmatthew wrote:
| https://based.cooking/ ?
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| bookmarked, thanks
| epr wrote:
| 4. Copyright protection does not apply to recipes themselves, but
| does apply to the fluff.
|
| IANAL
| jollyllama wrote:
| I figured it was to incentivize you to buy a cookbook or recipe
| catalogue without the ranting.
| sharx wrote:
| these days there is almost always a "jump to recipe" button at
| the top in my experience
| sct202 wrote:
| The buttons kind of blend in sometimes since they're next to
| the social media buttons. It's pretty wild that like the vast
| majority of sibling comments are about apps and scrapers, when
| there are already on-page solutions.
| barrkel wrote:
| Sometimes they could still do with more detail, especially when
| using imprecise imperial measurements. The one that I find most
| irritating is using volume measurements for non-liquids, e.g. cup
| of flour (sifted or not?), or ratios, where it's not specified if
| it's a weight:weight or volume:volume ratio.
| akiselev wrote:
| Google measures the amount of time you spend on a webpage before
| you go back to the search page (if you dont open in a new tab)
| and it's used as an important ranking signal. That's pretty much
| it.
|
| All the long winded recipe bullshit just keeps you on the page
| longer before you realize the recipe is crap.
| bottlepalm wrote:
| Long form content's days are numbered with AI on the horizon.
|
| Th primary reason being generating long form has become so cheap
| with AI that it has essentially rendered it worthless.
| julienchastang wrote:
| Speaking of AI, I think the image at the top of the blog post
| was generated by AI, maybe Stable Diffusion. I wonder what the
| prompt was.
| VLM wrote:
| The problem will not be that the value of content will drop to
| zero, but that the value of asking someone else to ask ChatGPT
| for me and then wrap it in ads for me to view is very low
| compared to the inevitable result of I'll just ask ChatGPT or
| similar directly.
|
| Its the LMFGTFY or whatever the acronym for "let me google that
| for you" brought to ChatGPT topics.
|
| If, for example, as already seems to be the case, the news
| becomes nothing more than someone else generated algorithmic
| fluff mixed with censored propaganda that somehow ends up with
| lower trust metrics than actual email spam, why do I need
| someone to make that for me, just ask for my own copy. The
| future will not be CNN trying to lie to you and sell you stuff,
| it'll be the AI directly lying to you and trying to sell you
| stuff, CNN will no longer be a provider of value. Or MSNBC or
| Fox or BBC or your choice of propaganda outlet.
|
| The other side problem is if you want culinary excellence today
| you'll eventually find guidance to buy "modernist cuisine at
| home" or similar technical cookbooks or maybe some old Alton
| Brown TV show memes, but search engines are required by
| corporate to have total randos provide opinions about page
| quality and needs met that are going to be uneducated and thus
| generic/bland and are designed to select inoffensive bland
| middle of the road content, not excellent recipes. What appeals
| to children more, an animated skinner box / loot box paradise
| designed to attract their attention and lure them in, or a
| calculus textbook? If corporate goal is to maximize the former
| you'll get more of the former, but what if the latter is the
| only way to learn calculus? Well, you aint going to learn
| calculus, thats for sure.
|
| How AI / ChatGPT will avoid bland normie ignorance is an
| excellent question. How to provide bland middle of the road
| answers to bland middle of the road questions is essentially a
| solved problem; how to cook the best hamburger possible cannot
| be handled by that subculture where groupthink conforming to
| average blandness is the primary criteria enforced.
| rebuilder wrote:
| I just saw ChatGPT say Fly Amanitas are a popular mushroom to
| cook with. I think I'll stick to human-made recipes for now.
| VLM wrote:
| I'm reminded of people eating Tide pods. Who makes 'better'
| memes? Social media or ChatGPT? Is something like this
| situation proof that Dead Internet Theory is real and
| social media is mostly bots?
| H1Supreme wrote:
| For folks who often find themselves searching the web for
| recipes, I'd recommend picking up a cookbook or two. My
| girlfriend has a stack of them she's inherited from family
| members over the years. We like to casually leaf through them to
| look for ideas.
|
| I've come to prefer this method because it's effectively the
| opposite of searching for recipes. Here's a curated list of meals
| you can make, pick one. I'd recommend a used book store, if
| possible. You'll probably get some random Grandma notes in the
| margins for substitutions / modifications.
| Our_Benefactors wrote:
| Cookbooks still have the same issue as an online recipe.
| Namely, you won't know how good the recipe is until after you
| make it.
| nofreelunch wrote:
| You have to be kidding. The culinary professionals who
| comprise the editorial staff of any edition of Joy of Cooking
| in fact know more about food than the average blogger. The
| recipes in Joy of Cooking are tried and true. I have seen too
| many recipes to count online that call for completely
| incorrect technique/equipmemt/etc. I have not once caught one
| of these types of errors in a reputable cookbook or
| professional culinary text. It is rare that one finds a good
| recipe online, though the internet can be usefup for gwtting
| ideas for flavor combinations, food pairings etc.
| VLM wrote:
| The used book store cookbook section, the supermarket
| checkout magazines, and internet recipes are all the same
| ultra low quality level.
|
| I find it fascinating that "pro cookbook" level recipes
| exist, but you'll NEVER find any mention in those three
| dumpy areas. You'll never see a copy of Modernist Cuisine
| at a used book store, much like those stores never contain
| contemporary, useful, high quality computer science / IT
| books...
|
| There's sort of a market for lemons out there where the
| widely held belief that competition will make great
| products simply does not apply. Just turn on a TV for
| another example, LOL.
| nofreelunch wrote:
| I'd agree with your general point on the overabundance of
| mediocre quality recipes, but the availability of quality
| literature isn't really in question to me. There are
| plenty of reliable sources that publish good cooking
| manuals that are widely available (even in used book
| stores). This is more a problem with consumers not using
| their own discretion or doing proper research, but also
| with people publishing shoddy excuses for recipes that do
| not appear to have been tested.
| sidlls wrote:
| That's just the way cooking food works, regardless of the
| recipe source.
| Our_Benefactors wrote:
| Which makes the value proposition of cookbooks dubious!
| Arrath wrote:
| I have to heartily disagree. Besides, you're more than
| welcome to make changes to any given recipe (and even
| notate those changes in the book!)
| Our_Benefactors wrote:
| I love online recipes. I can see what other people said
| about the recipe, and it's more likely to be something
| contemporary. Many of the recipes in cookbooks "age out"
| as that style of cuisine goes out of style. See: 1950s
| recipes with jello.
| bregma wrote:
| Mostly what other people say about online recipes is that
| they made something else by substituting one or all
| ingredients and altering the method.
| numeromancer wrote:
| You might like this:
|
| https://based.cooking/
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| You can try plainoldrecipe.com[0] for de-cluttering recipes. It
| doesn't work for a lot of the bloggy recipe sites, but when it
| does[1], it's great. And it works for all the popular sites like
| AllRecipes.
|
| [0] https://plainoldrecipe.com/
|
| [1]
| https://plainoldrecipe.com/recipe?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spen...
| gaudat wrote:
| Also see this crowdsourced alternative. If there are cooks on
| HN you can send a pull request to add your receipe.
|
| https://based.cooking/
| seanw444 wrote:
| Was going to comment this, but figured _someone_ had to have
| already.
| Eupraxias wrote:
| Was going to ask someone to post it because I couldn't find
| the link anymore!
| twh270 wrote:
| There's also the app CopyMeThat, which will capture recipes
| from darn near anything, let you tag and otherwise organize
| them, let you make a mealplan, and more. We have 3000+ recipes
| in it now (of which we've made probably a couple hundred lol).
| daniel-s wrote:
| https://based.cooking/
|
| The best recipe website on the internet.
|
| Is the best and doesn't rank on Google specifically because it
| doesn't do what this article talks about.
| jefftk wrote:
| It's a nice site, but I think the main reason it's not popular
| is that it doesn't have pictures. People like to see pictures
| before cooking.
| sshadow wrote:
| This reads like the pages they're talking about.
| macinjosh wrote:
| 1. People like to talk/write/blab
|
| 2. Keywords and content for SEO
|
| 3. Some bloggers plan on compiling their posts into a cookbook
| WilTimSon wrote:
| Now I can screenshot this and make a post "Why Are Answers That
| Aren't On HN So Long-Winded?", because you recapped the whole
| thing in 3 sentences.
| graeme wrote:
| I am amazed the article and the comments do not mention
| copyright.
|
| 1. You can't copyright a recipe
|
| 2. You can copyright the text of a long winded story which
| contains a recipe
|
| Any recipe site which did not contains stories would have no
| defendable intellectual property
|
| https://copyrightalliance.org/are-recipes-cookbooks-protecte...
| noworld wrote:
| Weird thought - you can't copyright a recipe, but could you
| patent one?
| nkurz wrote:
| Generally no. It's technically possible, but very few recipes
| would qualify for patent protection. Here's a decent summary
| article:
|
| _Can I patent a recipe?_
|
| _The simple answer is no. While it is technically possible
| to obtain a patent on certain recipes, the likelihood and
| rate of patents being granted for recipes is so low that it
| is almost pointless to try and obtain one unless you own a
| chain of restaurants or are looking to franchise your
| business. The effort required to protect intellectual
| property, such as a secret recipe or cooking process, is so
| great, and there are so many hurdles one must clear, that the
| ends hardly justify the means._
|
| https://www.webstaurantstore.com/article/57/protecting-
| your-...
| TehShrike wrote:
| I've heard this explanation before but it sounds like one of
| those "it sounds plausible, so people will keep repeating it"
| explanations.
|
| I suspect the real reason is what the author of the post claims
| - Google sends more readers to articles with lots of fluff.
|
| > This food blogger wrote about an experiment she conducted.
| She listened to some of her readers and actually tried just
| putting the recipe up top before everything else. All of the
| articles in her experiment went lower in the rankings.
| graeme wrote:
| Oh, to be clear: I agree! Google also rewards the fluff, you
| can show more ads, etc
|
| But the copyright is part of the equation and it deserves a
| mention.
|
| Also, part of google rankings is manual quality review,
| familiarity, etc. if a recipe site strongly diverges from the
| normal form it can confuse readers or quality rankers. The
| lack of copyright to a degree has influenced the form that is
| now industry standard.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| I don't see how this explains the situation. Your link states
| that even in a cookbook, which itself is copyrightable _as a
| whole_ , the individual recipes are still not copyrightable
| even when part of the larger whole.
|
| > Any recipe site which did not contains stories would have no
| defendable intellectual property
|
| The reason the site exists in the first place is for the
| recipes, and that intellectual content is not defendable.
| graeme wrote:
| Yes but it is much harder to scrape and replicate a site's
| essence if the instructions are laced in a story and the
| essence includes the story.
|
| Merely copying the recipes in a popular cookbook would not
| make for a bestseller.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > Yes but it is much harder to scrape and replicate a
| site's essence if the instructions are laced in a story and
| the essence includes the story
|
| It's also objectively a harder to follow recipe (i.e. a
| worse one).
|
| But that isn't even what recipe sites too. Open up google
| search type in a dish name and hit "I'm feeling lucky". I
| just did it for "mushroom Alfredo", you won't believe what
| happened next.
|
| - The first thing below the subtitle is a "Jump to recipe"
| button.
|
| - What gets jumped is 6 screen widths of rambling
| interspersed with highly produced photos, 3/4 of which are
| clearly advertising shots for the company that sponsored
| this particular recipe.
|
| The fact that the very first thing is a "jump to recipe"
| button indicates to me that even the author knows that you
| (the reader) want the recipe and not whatever they're about
| to ramble about. So why include it then? It's certainly not
| about copyright, the author is actively helping you not
| read it. The conclusion that makes the most sense to me is
| that the text is there to a) sell as advertising space for
| food-related sponsors and b) for SEO (go read through the
| sentences, each one seems crafted to hit on a different
| reason why someone might search for this recipe).
|
| > Merely copying the recipes in a popular cookbook would
| not make for a bestseller.
|
| It's true, but slap a celebrity's face on the cover, ghost
| write (or even chatgpt) a few hundred words of intro before
| each book and BAM you have a stereotipical book in the
| cooking section.
| luckylion wrote:
| That's mostly not what the recipe sites do though, they're
| not writing a long-winded story where you need to read
| carefully to decipher the actual ingredients. They're
| giving you 500 words of unrelated bullshit and then the
| recipe. If I recall correctly there are already SaaS which
| run on ML models to extract the actual recipe from text,
| and you could use those to get the data.
|
| Plus who really cares about individual recipes from
| randomblog.com, they rarely have anything new, just the
| 50000001 re-publishing of a traditional recipe.
| gnarbarian wrote:
| I would love to see a crowdsourced cookbook with user submitted
| variations on recipes and vote ranking and comments. search by
| ingredients, dish, macros, calories. create meal plans, meal
| prep, shopping lists. then you can integrate with grocery store
| apis to pick up your shopping list or have it delivered with
| Instacart.
|
| there are lots of avenues for monetization but it's a crowded
| space and hard to build all these features in and gain momentum.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| That's what sites like allrecipes.com have been doing for years
| and years.
| tayo42 wrote:
| My little dream project is to build a yelp for recipes. Books,
| internet or custom from users. I don't like Google results and
| also don't think search engines should be the place to find a
| good recipe or judge quality or authencity etc..
| abhijeetpbodas wrote:
| https://based.cooking/
| killtheweb wrote:
| [dead]
| strig wrote:
| This chrome extension is helpful, shows the recipe automatically
| in a modal:
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/recipe-filter/ahlc...
| Pigalowda wrote:
| I just tried it and it works well. Thanks for suggestion
| fancy_pantser wrote:
| Thank you for mentioning my extension! I created it after a
| comment here on HN spurred me into action, finally fed up with
| long-winded recipe blogs.
| readingnews wrote:
| I think you mean "why is everything online so long-winded". Geez,
| look up any video on nearly anything simple, they all follow the
| same format: * 10 mins of nonsense and irrelevant
| background into how great you are * 10 mins of setup
| * 10 mins of drama build-up * 1 min of the actual event
| * 10 mins of closing comments
|
| Oh, wait, I forgot, it is not about the content, it is all about
| how long I can get you to watch so I get more nickels. Dang, now
| I made myself sad...
| s-video wrote:
| I'd like to shout out Adam Ragusea for having a >2M subscriber
| cooking channel while not doing any of this.
| Chirael wrote:
| Don't forget to like and subscribe
| criddell wrote:
| I recently had an issue with my water softener. I searched and
| Google identified some videos and the time stamp in the videos.
| When I clicked the link, the video started right at the
| relevant part.
| taftster wrote:
| Don't forget to subscribe, click the like button, share with
| friends, sign up for our newsletter.
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| Also applies to self help books. There's 10 pages of content,
| but people won't pay $40 for 10 pages so you gotta fill it with
| 190 pages of nonsense and spread the content around to the
| point of making it useless.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Interestingly they provide 180 pages of filler to give a 10
| page summary of Buddhism which is itself captured in 57 dense
| volumes of content. That level of compression gives you an
| indication of how valuable a self help book will be.
|
| https://archive.org/details/dhatukatha-
| pts/182706089-Udana-a...
| denton-scratch wrote:
| You could argue that a ten-page "summary" of Buddhism is
| long-winded, and that if you can't convey the essence with
| a glance, then you're finger-painting.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Something something storytelling
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Like those ten pages of content were useful anyway!
| LanceH wrote:
| The absolute standard for content goodness (if you're
| interested in wrestling) is Cary Kolat. Watch any instructional
| by him. No "like and subscribe", no "hey guys". It's demo,
| maybe brief explanation, and technical breakdown.
| cudgy wrote:
| This extends to many academic papers and other expository as
| well. Repeat the same thing multiple times with a slight twist
| and use of different terms. So much communication could be more
| succinctly stated, but the incentives of reader retention, web
| seo and other marketing techniques, appealing to the lowest
| mental common denominator, following "good" communication
| practices, etc. are too strong for most content creators to
| fight.
|
| Furthermore, the structure of what is considered good writing
| feeds into this: state your point in the introduction, state
| your point in the body, and restate your point in the
| conclusion of the article. Reminds me of television shows that
| recap what you saw prior to the 2 minute commercial, just in
| case you forgot what you were watching 2 minutes ago.
| christopherslee wrote:
| I'm sure there's some SEO component, but I'm surprised no one
| mentioned ads.
|
| More real estate for you to scroll through for display ads?
| vharuck wrote:
| Point #3 from TFA mentions longer pages giving more space for
| ads.
|
| I agree, though. It's why I try going to websites run by people
| who make their money elsewhere. Like Food Network.
| [deleted]
| s1mon wrote:
| Searching for recipes turns out to be a great use for ChatGPT.
| You can give it pretty fuzzy search parameters and have
| conversations about adjusting the recipes and it will just give
| you a simple list of ingredients and instructions - no BS.
|
| Conversely, if you do want to use regular searches and recipes
| from internet sites, the Paprika app [0] is amazing. It will
| download and parse the recipes and get rid of all the BS. You can
| then sync recipes between devices and people as well as manage
| grocery lists and meal plans based on the recipes.
|
| [0] https://www.paprikaapp.com/
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| If you trust it not to 'hallucinate' a bad recipe no one would
| actually want to make.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| My new go-to is not to search DDG or Google at all. Just go to
| seriouseats.com and search there. America's Test Kitchen is a
| good second choice.
|
| There IS a lot of text, but it's mostly explaining how they
| tested and derived this recipe, and what the alternatives are.
| You can always skip to the end.
| gaberunsalot wrote:
| Try the Fresco app.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| There should be a standardized json format for recipies. Main
| keys for individual dishes could be 'ingredients', 'preparation',
| 'cooking', 'serving'.
| tflinton wrote:
| There is, schema.org has a Recipe type that most recipe blogs
| will publish the recipe as a json object in script tags.
| iambateman wrote:
| I had the same question, so I made https://SimplifyRecipe.com a
| few weeks ago!
|
| There's an iOS shortcut and chrome extension to reliably get rid
| of the life story. Hope it's useful. :)
| Eleison23 wrote:
| [dead]
| 878654Tom wrote:
| Wouldn't this be the case of clean recipe websites just being
| rated lower as their content seeks like duplication while these
| long-winded websites have a lot of original content even though
| that original content is not what you are searching for.
|
| Like, a clean website about how to reverse sear a steak has maybe
| like 5 sentences and other clean websites write it the same for
| 90% (how many ways can you explain it?) but a website full of
| fluff has 200 sentences that are more original making the content
| look unique while they still describe how to reverse sear a
| steak.
| martin_a wrote:
| SEO.
|
| That's it. Done. No need to read another article about it.
| meowzero wrote:
| Everything is long winded these days: books, recipes, podcasts,
| videos, blogs, etc. Even with tiktoks, they try to use the
| maximum amount of time for their content.
| yafbum wrote:
| Because the people publishing them love to pack them with ads,
| and long-windedness causes more ad impressions.
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| Recipes on the internet are the worst mess, thousands of recipes
| for yellow cake that differ in ingredients and quantities for no
| discernable reason, someone's recipe for spanish rice made with
| taco bell sauce packets, macaroni and cheese with more mayonnaise
| then macaroni and cheese combined, and now the bloggers where you
| have to read through six pages of how the author used to make the
| recipe with their departed grandmother before getting to anything
| of substance.
|
| Instead I bought a used 1950's Betty Crocker cookbook from a used
| book store, beats Google every time.
| andrewjmg wrote:
| it's the effect of years of unchecked SEO monopoly from Google.
| I hope ChatGPT can change that in some way or other.
| nicksrose7224 wrote:
| try asking for chocolate chip cookie recipe on chatgpt, it
| works awesome already. The only issue i see is I can't verify
| in general if the recipe is accurate (like all things ChatGpt
| outputs). But these cookies i just happen to know are correct
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| Maybe chatgpt can fix the anarchist cookbook?
| [deleted]
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| > for no discernable reason
|
| This is why I really like Food Labs. This cookie recipe is the
| most famous example: https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab-
| best-chocolate-chip...
|
| They bake hundreds of cookies with different quantities of
| ingredient to show the effect that each ingredient has in the
| baking process. So now not only do you know what somebody's
| recipe is, but you also know exactly how to modify it to suit
| your own tastes.
| sharperguy wrote:
| ChatGPT can be a nice alternative to googling. It will just
| give you the recipe without the nonsense, and you can ask it to
| convert the units, suggest replacements for ingredients if you
| don't have / can't eat them etc.
| imiric wrote:
| Recipes are not just algorithms for cooking food, despite also
| being a sequence of steps. They can vary by culture and
| personal preference. The most experienced chefs cook by sense,
| don't follow precise measurements, and often experiment by
| changing ingredients or amounts in different ways. This makes
| dishes interesting, and you learn what works and what doesn't
| in the process.
|
| There's no optimal way to prepare food. Once you've found a
| recipe that you enjoy, save it, remix it, and share it with
| someone else. If a 1950s cookbook works for you, that's great,
| but you'd be missing out on a lot of good food if you only
| follow recipes from a single, static source. Maybe even that
| meandering blogger is worth reading; otherwise there are many
| tools out there that could extract just the gist for you.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| The problem with old cookbooks is that ingredients and tastes
| change dramatically over the years.
|
| Pork for example in the 50s was way, way different than pork
| today--in the 70s and 80s pork producers decided pork had a bad
| reputation and bred pigs to be leaner with less fat so it would
| be sold as healthy food (remember the slogan, 'Pork: the other
| white meat'?). So if you had pork chops in the 50s they were
| much fattier and better tasting, almost like steak, vs. what
| you get today. A tomato meat sauce from that era might have you
| just use fat pork chunks instead of beef and if you make that
| same recipe to the letter today you'll just get dry nasty
| shredded pork.
|
| Another example is jello and aspic. In the 60s jello was new
| and turned into a fad to make aspic-like dishes, basically meat
| inside a rich and hearty congealed fat. If you look at
| cookbooks of that era you'll see all kinds of horrifying things
| like tuna fish in jello--it was novel at the time but now a
| curiosity.
|
| Old cookbooks are fun but IMHO I would stick with stuff from
| recent decades.
| nofreelunch wrote:
| Professional chef of 20 years here. Old Betty Crocker
| cookbooks are absolutely essential in any kitchen library,
| and vary from year to year, so it is worth having several.
| Some of the best, most reliable recipes you will ever find
| will come from these sources. Your advice here is terrible.
| Don't give advice that you aren't qualified to.
|
| As long as the recipes use standard measurements (i.e. no
| "knuckle of butter" type measurements) you are in great hands
| with Betty Crocker manuals and Joy of Cooking. Also, Julia
| Child and Jacques Pepin are not from recent decades. It is
| difficult to overstate how terrible your advice here is.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| Exactly. What you're looking for here is a collection of
| various cookbooks that you use as a starting point to
| create your _own_ recipes, which you collect an store in
| whatever fashion pleases you.
|
| Gran might have used index cards in a box, I use a 3-ring
| binder, you might use a Wordpress installation on a vanity
| domain. Doesn't matter.
|
| The Betty Crocker is a great starting point for a wide
| variety of dishes. America's Test Kitchen released a book
| with 100 recipes that covers a wide variety of basics. I
| have a copy of "Real Stew" that is invaluable. All these go
| on a shelf as reference, to be transcribed into your own
| recipe book as you choose.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I use my memory (my repertoire is small, and my recipes
| are not sensitive to quantities).
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Betty Crocker is a marketing invention. She is a fictitious
| character made to sell food:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Crocker
|
| I don't think you know what you're talking about, lol. At
| least recommend someone that exists and has legitimately
| good advice and history like Julia Childs and The Joy of
| Cooking.
| nofreelunch wrote:
| You obviously didn't read my comment. I prefer Joy of
| Cooking to Betty Crocker manuals, but both are written by
| teams of culinary professionals.
|
| Edit: in regard to your rambling point about changes in
| food production and popularity of dishes falling out of
| style, my 2006 edition of Joy of Cooking has 8 recipes
| for aspics and savory mousses (like lobster). The recipe
| for turtle soup calls for 1 pound of canned or thawed
| turtle meat cut into 1/2 inch chunks. Please stop
| invalidating others' exploration into topics you speak so
| authoritatively of from a position of ignorance.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Your attitude which started with your first comment is
| terrible. You're getting what you give here.
|
| Lurk more before you post.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > Betty Crocker is a marketing invention. She is a
| fictitious character made to sell food
|
| Did anyone here suggest otherwise? It's just a brand
| name. Big deal.
| astura wrote:
| So? Nobody thinks Betty Crocker is a real person.
| Tams80 wrote:
| Congratulations on informing us Buzzfeed writer.
| jspash wrote:
| I've never heard of butter measured in knuckles. I thought
| they used knobs?
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Americans still use "sticks" for some reason =)
| rrauenza wrote:
| I can't not think of this song now when Betty Crocker is
| mentioned:
|
| Betty Crocker's Bail by Clare Fader and the Vaudevillains -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpwhW_RrNOc
| Mrs. Betty Crocker is going to jail Her chocolate
| brownie cake mix is looking mighty stale Good ladies
| of the city are having a bake sale Raising necessary
| dough for Betty Crocker's bail
| focom wrote:
| How can a professional chef end up on HN? I am curious. Did
| you turn into a dev later in life?
| nofreelumch wrote:
| More of a superuser than a hacker. General interest in
| technology my whole life. Still a chef.
| NaOH wrote:
| Chefs are most definitely hackers, just operating in a
| different medium.
| ben7799 wrote:
| Joy of cooking has been updated many times since 1950.
|
| The editions from 30 years ago already had changes and
| guidance related to the changes in the way pork is
| raised/bred/produced. All those Aspic & gross molded meat
| recipes were banished from mainstream cookbooks 40+ years ago
| too.
|
| The internet recipes certainly don't take this kind of thing
| into account. Lots of them are bad versions of recipes that
| were plagiarized from famous cookbooks, which changes that
| don't make sense or issues that you will discover if you
| follow the recipe.
|
| Many of these recipe blogs are not interested in quality of
| the recipe, just quality of the SEO and getting their ad
| dollars. They are also certainly not interested in keeping
| the recipe healthy since they are probably not actually
| making the food from the recipe and eating it.
|
| You can do far better with an actual cookbook. I think the
| actual recipes on the internet are probably all just content
| farm nonsense. ChatGPT is probably really useful for writing
| the nonsense stuff at the top of the blog that helps with
| SEO!
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| No one mentioned Joy of Cooking here, and you glossed over
| my recommendation to get a cookbook from recent decades
| (not the 50s!)... like an updated version of The Joy of
| Cooking.
| nofreelunch wrote:
| Joy of cooking was mentioned multiple times here. Are you
| alright? What is the problem? You are being really pushy
| about a topic you seem to have marginal knowledge of.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Joy of Cooking was mentioned zero times in the comment I
| made originally and was replied to here above. I have no
| idea why the reply to me above mentioned it.
|
| Betty Crocker cookbook is what this whole comment thread
| was about. I trust you realize there is a very big
| difference between Joy of Cooking, a book written by the
| late Julia Childs, and The Betty Crocker Cookbook, a book
| written by a fictitious person invented by a giant
| corporation to market and sell their processed food.
| Please read and comprehend before you reply.
| nofreelumch wrote:
| Again, you are wrong.
|
| Julia Child had nothing to do with writing the Joy of
| Cooking.
|
| You have no fucking clue what you are talking about. Sit
| down little man.
| bluGill wrote:
| More than once I've seen an internet recipe on a large site
| where the person who submitted the recipe says what is
| published has minimal relation to what they submitted. All
| too often I see ketchup substituted for tomato sauce and a
| bit of sugar.
| psychphysic wrote:
| There's a great YouTube channel I'm not 100% of the name
| since I subscribed ages ago.
|
| Tasting history with Maximilian
|
| And I've never recommended it to anyone but I bet if someone
| enjoyed your comment as much as I did they'd enjoy that
| channel!
| Tams80 wrote:
| Well, he did just recently cook and eat leather, the mad
| man.
| h2odragon wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_of_Cooking
| bregma wrote:
| That one hasn't been the same since newer editions took out
| the illustrated how-to-skin-a-squirrel entry.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| First catch your tiger.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I've noticed a similar pattern in search results regarding anime
| series release dates.
|
| The main difference being that those anime articles seem entirely
| generated from templates.
| Trowter wrote:
| People on this forum will not like this opinion but I think
| TikTok is the superior recipe platform.
|
| If you already know the basics on how to cook it's great. Quick
| fire ingredients and methods with visuals to back it up, I can
| absorb an entire recipe in less than 30 seconds.
|
| I have an account dedicated to recipes and they algorithm is
| pretty good and will pretty much only ever show me recipes or
| similar nutrition based stuff.
| valarauko wrote:
| I think TikTok wouldn't work for most people for recipes. Short
| format aside, it's a great visual aid for sure, but I
| personally find the utility limited. It's alright for limited
| ingredients & steps with forgiving proportions, but I think it
| breaks down beyond that. I suppose it helps to temper
| expectations, though. Cacio e pepe? Sure. Baking recipe with
| multiple unforgiving precise measurements and temperatures? Not
| so much - for most people.
| delecti wrote:
| Most recipe pages also include links directly to the recipe right
| at the top. The blog portion is annoying, and also leads to some
| funny memes, but it's easy to bypass.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I would honestly guess that the blog text is point of the process
| and not the recipe for many of the writers. Maybe the recipe is
| just there to justify the process of writing the blog post. Or
| they would eventually be asked for the recipe, so get away having
| to repeatedly answer to same question.
| OscarTheGrinch wrote:
| My longwinded crap filteiring heuristic: If an article hasn't
| gotten to the point by paragraph 3, I'm out.
| ptsneves wrote:
| Great heuristic! Will try it out. I basically gave up on
| searching for recipes on google. I found that supermarket or
| store-websites often get down to the point and without
| ridiculously special ingredients for something as simple as a
| soup.
|
| I once looked for a beetroot soup recipe and was dumbfounded by
| the crazy spices and preparations required for something so
| simple. I always found that I never had the ingredients so I
| went ahead and tried to come up with the recipe myself.
|
| It makes me wonder how much actual knowledge is now buried or
| hard to find in the age of the internet. The irony of it all.
| Reason077 wrote:
| This is why I love www.bbcgoodfood.com. Good quality recipes.
| Short and too the point, usually just 1-2 pages. No ads or silly
| long winded stories.
|
| Long live public service media!
| fleddr wrote:
| So let us imagine an ideal situation from a recipe consumer point
| of view. You go to Google, type "best chili recipe", and Google
| would immediately show the best recipe directly into its UI,
| based on all the data is has on you and some sophisticated
| recommendation algorithm. Further, you have a set of standardized
| actions like "print", "send to iPad", "favorite", etc.
|
| You no longer have to read the author's diary entry and this
| entire hyper-optimized workflow doesn't cost you a cent. Perfect,
| right?
|
| Well, I suppose that in these AI times ultimately the effort of
| even asking the question would be redundant, obviously Google
| knows Wednesday is your chili day, and your fridge had already
| ordered the ingredient.
|
| There's just one problem: what about the recipe writers? What
| about artists? What about anybody ever producing any content of
| monetizable value?
|
| What incentive is there to produce content when users never pay
| directly and middlemen aggregate it, removing you from the
| equation? You, the person that created the bloody thing. It's
| like you don't even exist.
|
| This isn't just big tech, we have an active role in this. When
| users do not have to pay, they generally won't. Digital content
| has no value yet we obviously have the natural born right to
| consume it anyway.
| shrx wrote:
| Why do you feel everything needs to be monetized? You don't
| need to be compensated for sharing a recipe online, you can
| upload it just because you like the outcome so much that you
| want others to try it too.
| fleddr wrote:
| "Why do you feel everything needs to be monetized?"
|
| You should ask Google that. Because they're the one actually
| monetizing. It's like a money printer with everybody's
| content as free fuel.
|
| I didn't say everything needs to be monetized. I'm saying
| that there's content that requires to be monetized (otherwise
| the content will simply not be produced) and content where
| the producer will attempt to monetize it because they believe
| it has monetary value.
|
| Surely it's up to the content producer to decide on
| monetization and not you. If you believe a recipe is
| worthless and not worthy of payment, yet then still continue
| to consume it regardless by bypassing any attempt at
| monetization, you're a hypocrite.
|
| Either it is worthless or it isn't. You can't have it both
| ways. Or well, on the internet you can, and that is exactly
| the problem.
|
| Don't take it as a personal attack. Our internet culture is
| hypocritical. It's a WE thing and I include myself in it. The
| internet we have is of our own making and our own behavior.
| kraussvonespy wrote:
| Opposite opinion here: Internet recipes are generally terrible.
| It's almost impossible to make any determination as to whether
| recipes have ever been tested or optimized or anything, and I
| just don't trust them. But if I go to seriouseats.com (for
| example) and they show me all of the work they went through to
| get to the recipe, I trust them.
|
| I'd say that well over half of the random Internet recipes I try
| aren't very good, have been developed with bad techniques, use
| the wrong flavors, try to fix flavor issues by adding more
| flavors and so on. Using a vetted site (the America's Test
| Kitchen recipes are also quite good) gets me ~98% success.
|
| I'd rather take the extra 5 minutes of time to look through how
| the recipe was created and tested to make sure it's a good recipe
| than spend a couple of hours making an unknown recipe with a
| 50/50 shot to not be terrible. YMMV.
| jerf wrote:
| I just use internet recipes for ideas more than anything else.
| Yesterday the wife's dinner instructions were "we have chicken
| and sweet potatoes", and I didn't feel like just cooking them
| directly. So I googled around a bit and came up with
| https://www.self.com/gallery/non-boring-ways-to-eat-chicken-...
| , no particular recommendation here, just posting that to show
| that I ultimately saw the picture for the "buffalo chicken
| sweet potatos" and made something based on that idea. I didn't
| even _look_ at the recipe. In fact, I only just now noticed
| that the picture went with #4 and not #3. (Looking at the
| recipe now, I didn 't even guess the ingredients from the
| picture correctly.)
|
| And what was nice isn't that I made something amazing, it's
| more that I made something that was good, and wasn't our usual
| fare. It's not something I would normally have done.
|
| The internet is pretty decent at that. If you've been cooking
| long enough to read a recipe and just take a few ideas here and
| there, I find it very helpful.
|
| But it's been a long time since I pulled a recipe from the
| internet and carefully made it exactly as described. There's a
| lot of people with tastes quite different than mine, and
| somewhat more judgmentally, there's a lot of people out there
| with _no_ taste posting their recipes. On the Internet, nobody
| knows you have the culinary tastes of a dog.
| tflinton wrote:
| Shameless plug: Checkout https://rotten.recipes/find/recipes
| you can search with ingredients you have and it finds recipes
| from various blogs/sites across the web with them.
|
| The nice part is it lists the recipes with a summary of their
| ingredients so its pretty easy to get ideas without having to
| delve into the actual recipes themselves.
| somethoughts wrote:
| That's awesome - I just logged in to comment that someone
| should write this functionality up as a product/app.
| ben7799 wrote:
| ATK does some amazing stuff.
|
| Their gluten free baking concepts in their cookbook are like a
| decade ahead of most of the gluten free products you can buy at
| the store. Crazy stuff.
| kraussvonespy wrote:
| That's a great tip! I'm getting more dinner guests with
| gluten issues and would like to get better at that side of
| cooking. Is there a good place (cookbook) to start with?
| kgc wrote:
| More ad targeting possibilities.
| cratermoon wrote:
| The real reason is because recipes consisting of just the list of
| ingredients can't be copyrighted, but the articles and all the
| other stuff are copyrightable.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| A couple paragraphs ought to be enough to make it
| copyrightable.
| Finnucane wrote:
| Ingredients lists and basic instructions ("place potatoes in
| boiling water") are not copyrightable. Only the additional
| text is copyrightable. This has long been a 'problem' for
| cookbook writers and chefs. Unlike cookbooks, blogs have no
| particular constraints on how much text they can add, and as
| pointed out here, perverse incentives to add lots of
| extraneous material.
| brians wrote:
| I don't see this. If somebody's scraped _just the recipes_ from
| all these long winded sites, I'd be thrilled! Adding the extra
| nonsense and narrative doesn't prevent that.
|
| The reason is SEO; this is Google's fault.
| tomstockmail wrote:
| There's https://www.justtherecipe.com/
|
| (I am not affiliated with it)
| gr4yb34rd wrote:
| i really do not like being the guy that goes "but chatgpt" in
| threads about other topics, but i have found it to be pretty good
| at generating simplified recipes.
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| One of my favorite uses of Chat GPT is asking it for recipes
| because it doesn't add a narrative
| alach11 wrote:
| The problem is ChatGPT recipes are (frequently) bad or
| (unlikely but possibly) dangerous. Maybe this will change as
| the service improves? For now though you'd be much better off
| using a low-fluff reliable source like SeriousEats or NYTimes.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Some guy at Google decided it was the way to go almost 20 years
| ago, and it was cargoculted into oblivion
| jefftk wrote:
| Very impressive that this post itself is a 1000-word introduction
| to a chili recipe.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| FWIW, a lot of top selling cookbooks are like this as well. Maybe
| there's not a blurb like this before _every_ recipe, but I don 't
| think I've got a cookbook that doesn't have at least some memoir
| or essay between sections and/or a few personal stories attached
| to recipes throughout.
| tayo42 wrote:
| It's not much of an issue though it's so quick and effortless
| to scan a page. And I like the background info in the cookbooks
| I have.
| srcreigh wrote:
| Even the worst recipe sites often have a "Jump to recipe" button
| to skip past the story and ads.
|
| pihole works decently well to stop ads from loading on mobile,
| speeding up the site and avoiding janky movement of the copy as
| ads load in.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Bullet point #1 here doesn't get enough credit either in this
| article or generally here on HN comments, but is a major factor.
|
| A lot of the recipe blogs that originated this form of long-
| winded stories leading into the eventual recipe _have_ regular
| readers. Many of those readers aren 't looking for specific
| recipes at any given time they are looking for the stories
| _first_. Those stories are the real content to those regular
| readers. (And regular readers with their recurring ad revenue
| /demographics are the ones that pay the bills, ultimately, not
| "went searching for a specific recipe" utilitarian users.)
|
| This isn't even a new phenomenon in recipes pop culture, because
| food TV shows learned this decades ago. Most cooking shows break
| down into two categories: competitions (which mostly never even
| give recipes) and "lifestyle" shows that may include recipes but
| just as much include the "celebrity chefs" chatting as much about
| who they are and what is going on in their lives and storytelling
| why the recipes in question were of interest in that moment as
| much as the details of the recipes themselves.
|
| This isn't even an isolated phenomenon to recipes. It is common,
| modern parasocial behavior. You _could_ look at something like
| Twitch as a utilitarian resource to see gameplay or learn tips
| /tricks, but obviously nearly every stream is full of streamers
| chatting about their day while they wait for game lobbies or in
| between other parts of gameplay and whatever tips/tricks they may
| have to impart. It's the parasocial "human interest" that builds
| the biggest and most reliable parts of their audiences (and in
| turn most of their revenue).
|
| There are a lot of reasons people complain about it a lot more
| with recipe bloggers than Twitch streamers.
| hector_vasquez wrote:
| The true outrage isn't that the 0.01% of recipe seekers who
| like to read a story and get served 77 ads as they scroll
| through and laugh/cry before the recipe get these recipes high
| in Google's search results. It's that the rest of us who HATE
| ALL THAT also get these abhorrent search results.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| If 100% of regular blog readers want that story and that
| makes up 98% of your ad revenue, it doesn't matter what
| percentage of outside ad hoc search engine traffic don't want
| that story.
|
| You aren't wrong to feel "outrage" as that external random
| visitor with no interest in the blog except for one single
| random recipe, but you _aren 't the target audience_, sorry.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| I saw it mentioned here on HN by the author themselves, and after
| using it for a few weeks it's been a game changer. If you're
| tired of reading a person's life story in a recipe, give Umami a
| shot. It's free, too.
|
| https://www.umami.recipes/
| bojangleslover wrote:
| https://recipe-search.typesense.org/
| destroy-2A wrote:
| Chat gpt is perfect for this you can add any variation you want
| no fluff or faff.
|
| Also I have to mention this http://www.cookingforengineers.com/
| alach11 wrote:
| ChatGPT is the last thing I would use for recipe help (0).
| Instead I'd go with a reliable source like SeriousEats,
| NYTimes, or as you suggested, Cooking for Engineers.
|
| (0) - https://i.redd.it/8xvhkhxc495a1.png
| voytec wrote:
| Now that's highly caloric!
| dicethrowaway1 wrote:
| That's awfully specific, I'm guessing it was preprompted.
| nluken wrote:
| ChatGPT also doesn't really understand the recipes it's giving
| you, so I don't know if I would trust it to make something
| tasty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT8KoWpqUgg
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| SEO.
| [deleted]
| k2enemy wrote:
| I also wonder how much of it is a perception among the blog
| authors that they have to make their recipes long winded for
| SEO reasons. They see everyone else doing it, there's an
| information cascade, and they believe (perhaps incorrectly)
| that they also must do it.
| VLM wrote:
| There's a link to a PDF here from google itself.
|
| https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/9281931?hl=en
|
| I suppose you could have a "conspiracy theory" level argument
| that Google publishes what it claims it will do only to turn
| around and do the opposite, but that seems unlikely.
|
| Unfortunately if you publish guidelines that you'll promote
| pages that are not auto-generated DB dumps, and prefer pages
| that promote the idea the author put in a lot of effort and
| is highly authoritative and E-E-A-T and all that you can read
| in the guidelines, you're going to get generic recipes
| wrapped in a VERY thick blanket of fake filler, good enough
| to fool the average reader (whom doesn't read very well) but
| ridiculously inadequate compared to where the pros and semi-
| pros operate.
| zerocrates wrote:
| I've never quite understood why people hate this trend so much.
| The fluff is often overdone, agreed, but when you don't want that
| stuff, just scroll down until you hit ingredients and you're good
| to go.
| rapsacnz wrote:
| I generally try to find Jamie Oliver versions of recipes - they
| are short, tested and they taste good.
| kemiller2002 wrote:
| It's because recipes aren't copy writable. Stories are. If you
| include the story then it's much harder to scrape the recipe.
| Tams80 wrote:
| Eh? I just stick to a few sites that have more recipes than I
| could likely ever cook, and despite being adventurous, I won't
| ever cook all of them.
|
| BBC Food BBC Good Food Cookpad The odd The Guardian recipe (which
| are full of fluff)
|
| I'm sure others can point you to other sites that just have
| recipes.
| cosinetau wrote:
| Beans do not belong in chili. They are probably writing so much
| in hopes you do not notice.
| [deleted]
| photochemsyn wrote:
| An alternative opinion with a logical underpinning:
|
| 1) Chili is a dish most closely associated with the
| southwestern United States.
|
| 2) Among the most important cultivars of that region, dating
| back thousands of years, are: peppers, maize, squash, beans.
| This combination provides a complete mix of nutrients for a
| healthy diet.
|
| 3) Therefore, adding all those ingredients to chili in some
| form or other is entirely justifiable, as well as being
| historically accurate.
|
| Meat, on the other hand, is entirely optional.
| cosinetau wrote:
| Can you help me corroborate your theory of historically
| accurate chili? I can not find any document supporting your
| "thousands of years" claim.
|
| It not hard to believe that native people dumped some of the
| earth's best vegetables into a pot and let them steep, but, I
| can not find _any_ support for your claim.
|
| I genuinely hope you enjoy your historically-accurate, bean-
| laden chili, but now I am suspicious; I know that LLMs can
| not really enjoy the richness in any chili.
| tflinton wrote:
| Most Texas Red Chili's originate from a dish called Chile
| Colorado with deep roots in mexican cuisine. Chile Colorado
| is served with tortillas and frijoles (pinto beans), and
| usually some pickled veggies. At some point its not
| impossible to believe someone went "To hell with it" and
| just added all of the ingredients to the pot.. but you are
| correct, there's really no good clear history of how Chili
| with meat became Chili with beans.
|
| Fun fact, chile colorado translated just means colored red
| chile.
|
| Edit: I fixed some typos.
| VLM wrote:
| This is the problem in a nutshell, do you define a "good
| recipe" as one that is historically accurate, that tastes
| good, or that follows various belief systems like not
| culturally appropriating or only culturally appropriating
| when you do a good job of it?
|
| Meanwhile the ad sales platform is going to define a "good
| recipe" as one that results in high click thru on ads they
| have contracts for.
|
| And add a side dish of the people doing the rating of how
| good the page is, specifically have zero skill in the field
| and are going to have intense normie middle of the road
| bias because on average they don't know anything.
|
| If you magically crowdsourced the averaged opinion of
| average folks about the General Theory of Relativity in
| 1900, would that result be useful and have beaten Einstein
| before he wrote it in 1915? The AI people think so;
| especially the ones who's paychecks depend on it;
| personally I have my doubts.
| cosinetau wrote:
| Thanks for writing in VLM.
|
| No one in this comment thread made any claim of any
| recipe or particular chili recipe being "good".
|
| Your summary is confusing to me, because whatever the
| "normie middle of the road" idea we are supposedly now
| discussing does not have anything to do with what I said
| or had asked questions about.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| So true. And they left out the macaroni!
| somecompanyguy wrote:
| the lore that know-nothings told themselves about seo. the think
| seo is about content, its about users. they screwed this pooch up
| over a decade ago and it noticeably changed the content of the
| internet for the worse, much like what people are now consciously
| thinking about chatgpt. its shocking that we finally have enough
| people to notice this but it wont be enough.
| Peritract wrote:
| It's been a very long time since I've visited a recipe site that
| didn't have a prominent 'jump to recipe' button. Recipes have
| stories because some people value them, and they have a button
| for those who don't.
|
| This is a tired, old complaint made by people who don't actually
| ever cook or read recipes, they just want to shop AI solutions /
| flog their 'innovative' start-up / write about a different topic
| entirely but draw readers in initially with a 'kids these days'
| tone.
| daveguy wrote:
| Sites have stories because recipes cannot be copyrighted, but
| stories can.
| Peritract wrote:
| That is one of the reasons for some of those stories, sure.
|
| However, the specifics of reasons have basically nothing to
| do with the trend of tech evangelists making the same tedious
| and inaccurate arguments again and again. In this article,
| the blogger decrying the practice links to a recipe blogger
| who's already covered the same ground more efficiently; this
| isn't even hot air.
|
| 'Why do tech bloggers always use this outdated example to pad
| things' is a better and far more original question.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Google wills it so. Why? IDK, ask them. Probably yet another case
| of something net-harmful making them more money.
|
| Luckily it's also one of the only cases where a microformat is
| actually nigh-universally used. Outside a few sites where the
| "fluff" isn't fluff and is actually good content itself (e.g.
| Serious Eats) I just throw the URL into Paprika 3 (no
| affiliation, and there are tons of other programs and probably
| some browser plugins to do the same thing) and let it strip it
| down to the ingredients and instructions by reading the
| microformat markup. Works flawlessly nearly every time.
|
| [EDIT] Credit where it's due, I'm also pretty sure the
| microformat is only popular because of Google. I think they
| downrank sites in recipe searches if Google can't "see" the
| recipe, using the microformat. They may be both the cause of, and
| solution to, the problem.
| jxdxbx wrote:
| Yes. I think Google deserves a ton of credit for microformats,
| and you can just use a browser extension like Repibox that
| shows you only the recipe when you go to a recipe site.
|
| I think the reason Google wanted microformats is for Google
| Assistant recipe answers.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i just print them out so I can refer to the recipe when my
| fingers are wet/sticky while preparing the meal.
| coding123 wrote:
| I wonder when microformats are going to die now that we have
| gpt
| looseyesterday wrote:
| [dead]
| thebricklayr wrote:
| Paprika is great, though Umami's importer is even better:
| https://www.umami.recipes
|
| Umami has Chrome/Firefox extensions that you can use while on
| desktop, which will sync your recipes to the app. Disclaimer: I
| built it :)
| Tams80 wrote:
| It may look better, but it's only available on iOS.
| thebricklayr wrote:
| Every iOS feature is available on web:
| https://www.umami.recipes/sign-in
|
| But yes, you are right, as far as native apps go. FWIW, I
| just got an Android test phone so I can start on that
| version, should be ready in a few months.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| > The beautifully designed free app to collect, organize,
| and share recipes. For iPhone and iPad.
| dunham wrote:
| Yeah, doesn't look like it's available on M1 macs either,
| which I think think is just a checkbox in the app store.
| thebricklayr wrote:
| I tried that and it was _super_ buggy... Thankfully I
| built the whole thing in SwiftUI so that I can port it to
| Mac fairly quickly. Moving as fast as I can!
| OutThisLife wrote:
| I just want to say that I really love your choice of colours
| and how they flow together. It's so satisfying
| thebricklayr wrote:
| Wow thank you! Fun fact: that orange color is actually part
| of the display-p3 color space:
| https://webkit.org/blog/10042/wide-gamut-color-in-css-
| with-d...
|
| ^ Colors in that space only just recently started getting
| supported by displays/browsers. And while p3 colors work in
| css on Safari, I had to use a single-pixel background png
| to make it work in Chrome.
| cobaltoxide wrote:
| What is the microformat? Does it have a name or do you have a
| link?
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I _think_ it 's mainly h-recipe:
|
| http://microformats.org/wiki/h-recipe
|
| But it looks like there might be one or two others active in
| the wild.
| johnfn wrote:
| Finding a result on Google, clicking on it, then leaving and
| clicking something else on Google means you probably didn't
| find the thing you were looking for. Staying on one site for a
| while probably means you found what you were using for.
| Presumably Google uses this information to try to determine if
| you engaged with the site, and then it ranks sites that you
| stay on longer higher in search results.
|
| This works great for things like StackOverflow posts where you
| can quickly judge if the answer is correct, and if it's not,
| you can quickly bounce. It's not great for recipes, which are
| almost always "correct" (in that they are a recipe of the type
| you're looking for), so spending longer probably just means you
| scrolled for longer.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I've never seen a recipe that was "correct". I don't even
| know what that would mean. As far as i'm concerned, a recipe
| is a suggestion. If I don't know how to make a dish, I read
| several recipes, and then brew my own.
|
| I don't think most online recipes are "correct", especially
| chili recipes that call for Heinz baked beanz. Wut?
| wobbly_bush wrote:
| How does it interplay with opening multiple search results in
| new tabs at once? It's been ages since I've personally
| visited search results sequentially - I open them in batches.
| luckylion wrote:
| Not a problem, you're an outlier, the average user either
| doesn't use tabs or doesn't open multiple of them to let
| them load in the background because they haven't
| experienced the web on a modem and "I click, page loads in
| 1-5s, I read" is what they're used to.
| sandos wrote:
| I assume thats how Google Nest Hub can parse recpies into
| actual steps with a button or voice command to step forward!
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > Google wills it so. Why? IDK, ask them.
|
| Google presents what its customers (people doing searches) want
| to see, so shouldn't we ask the people who click the results
| that make it to the top (whether they leave the page
| dissatisfied or not is a different story, right?) over and
| over?
|
| What incentive does Google have for prioritizing succinct
| quality posts versus blogspam posts? What incentive does Google
| have for prioritizing blogspam posts over succinct quality
| posts? Why is it the way it is if we're talking about the
| unsponsored (not paid) organic results?
|
| As a blogspam author, why do you want people on your page? To
| get more AdSense views/impressions? You typically aren't
| selling anything on a website that gives away free long-winded
| recipes (so conversion rate/cost per click/paid advertising
| isn't really a concern?)
| lmkg wrote:
| > _Google presents what its customers (people doing searches)
| want to see_
|
| Google presents what it _thinks people want to see_ , which
| it infers based on some number it can collect, like time-on-
| page, or scroll depth. The argument is that its proxy metrics
| for "the user liked this" are ill-considered, especially in
| this particular context.
|
| Even when Google acts like a rational actor, it is not an
| oracle. It rationally optimizes an observable metric, which
| may or may not correlate to its actual goal.
| Justin_K wrote:
| Trying to mentally parse these long winded recipes = takes
| longer to read = "greater engagement". These crappy recipes are
| all about seo and add placement as you'll notice these recipes
| are loaded with Google ads. So it is a self fulfilling prophecy
| that the pages where users spend more time and see more ads are
| ranked highest.
| treeman79 wrote:
| I've completely given up on web recipes, and only use YouTube
| ones now. Most of the good recipes have a comment that has a
| condensed version of ingredients and instructions.
| psychphysic wrote:
| I suspect theres also a halo effect.
|
| Like how select cuts of beef slow roasted with veggies and
| served on a bed of glazed hand cut potatoes.
|
| Is more appealing to a potential cook than cut beef in a slow
| cooker with some wedges.
| unixlikeposting wrote:
| this smells entirely like the notorious 10-minute youtube
| monetization switch.
|
| longer times on a page means longer enagement == more ads
| revenue.
|
| is it possible that google is incentivizing longer engagements
| via adwords by using search priority that ranks by average time
| spent on page?
| dawnerd wrote:
| Oh hey, something I have first hand experience with working with
| fairly large food / recipe focused sites.
|
| It's primarily driven by ads. I know, huge shock there. A lot of
| people might assume it's purely an SEO play and while that's true
| to an extent, it's mostly for the ads.
| radley wrote:
| Yeah, I figured ad space plus engagement stats. By placing the
| recipe at the bottom of a long page, they can show multiple
| ads. Viewers will have to engage longer, demonstrating greater
| relevancy and interest by scrolling to the end of the page.
| extr0pian wrote:
| Personally, I find the vast majority of recipe websites
| absolutely terrible. It seems others have shared small and
| minimalist recipe websites, but the one that I use and haven't
| seen shared yet is https://plain.recipes.
| weedking wrote:
| NYT recipes are a nice refuge from this sort of thing. Easy to
| get around the paywall with browser add-ons as well.
| chiffre01 wrote:
| The Internet Archive has hundreds of free to read cookbooks full
| of recipes with minimal or no additional story.
| indymike wrote:
| SEO. Recipes are a great place to learn how bad SEO makes content
| for people.
| tuckerpo wrote:
| Luke Smith, the FOSS + minimalism evangelist has a platform to
| solve this:
|
| https://based.cooking/
|
| Shortform, straight to the point recipes. Just ingredients and
| steps. No ads. No life stories.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Nice lightweight site, but I don't tend to trust recipes that
| don't have any feedback from people who've attempted it. Which,
| of course, leads to the review-spam problem.
| harrywynn wrote:
| I spent a few hours this past weekend putting my own recipes up
| for exactly this reason. Just give me the info.
|
| https://gluten-free.recipes
| RedditKon wrote:
| SEO - Google ranks those pages higher.
| bmelton wrote:
| The conventional wisdom for SEO is that "good content" ranges
| between 2,000-4,000 words. Most recipes are but a fraction of
| that, so the rest is filler to meet the aforementioned SEO
| wisdom. I'm not sure whether Google actually does or doesn't
| reward content fitting with that arbitrary range, or why it
| might, but all the SEO Youtubers are saying it does, so all the
| people cargo culting SEO wisdom are doing it, so it doesn't
| really matter.
|
| More practically, the longer a piece of content appears to be,
| the more opportunities to stuff ads into it without appearing
| like a cash grab.
|
| Google does definitely reward users for including micro-slash-
| schema based content though, so the recipes themselves are likely
| included on the page in a parsable json+ld format, which is great
| for ingestion by apps like Paprika (which many others have
| mentioned.)
|
| The good news is that there are rumors that Google is moving away
| from whatever content-based system they may or may not have been
| using before, and towards a "helpfulness" system for ranking
| pages -- basically, how directly did this article address the
| search question that took you to it as the answer.
|
| This should prefer direct, concise answers (e.g., "2+2 = 4" vs
| "2+2 starts with the history of numbers, which are of course
| ciphered numeral systems originating with the Egyptians")
|
| Time will tell how accurately that can be measured, or what wild
| gamesmanship will occur as the result of it.
| killtheweb wrote:
| [dead]
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Saw a tweet recently where someone took a long-winded recipe from
| a website, posted it to ChatGPT and asked ChatGPT to play it
| back, taking out all the fluff and making it succinct. Result was
| perfect, just an ingredients list and simple instructions, no
| mistakes.
| withinrafael wrote:
| A simple set of directions is uncopyrightable.
| (https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf)
|
| Recipes can be protected under copyright law if they are
| accompanied by "substantial literary expression."
| (https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html)
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| The whole of the article may be copyrightable, but the actual
| recipe and ingredients remains uncopyrightable. From you first
| link:
|
| > However, the registration will not cover the list of
| ingredients that appear in each recipe, the underlying process
| for making the dish, or the resulting dish itself.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| SEO may be the reason for many of the bigger blogs, but I think
| we shouldn't default to cynicism here. People who are passionate
| about a given topic often love to ramble on about it. And if you
| aren't very passionate about food, you aren't likely to start a
| food blog.
|
| And most people don't start blogging as a purely educational
| activity, but rather as a way of expressing themselves. As a
| result, they aren't necessarily thinking about optimal user
| experience like a software business would.
|
| I had a coworker who had a food blog and she would fill each post
| with ramblings like all the rest do, but it is because she wanted
| to tell her story of why that particular meal was important to
| her. And if you were to ask her in person about a meal or what
| she likes to cook, she would talk in as much detail since that
| was her passion.
|
| The default of assuming everyone is a bad actor is growing rather
| tiresome. Not to mention, these people didn't need to share their
| recipes at all. And we aren't compensating them for their work.
| We just complain.
| schnable wrote:
| Agreed, but in this case the outside incentives align with the
| passion, thus making this style proliferate.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| Online recipes were the catalyst for me switching from Chrome to
| Brave. It doesn't remove the filler copy, but at least there's
| not an ad every 2 sentences.
| ano-ther wrote:
| If Google rewards the fluff, couldn't the authors put it after
| the actual recipe? I.e., tldr; first and then the backstory?
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| ad placement
|
| /thread
| nottorp wrote:
| Without reading the article, it's because I have yet to see a
| recipe that's not on a blogspam site.
| pjkundert wrote:
| We will soon have LLMs that:
|
| - aren't infected by "Woke" theology (ie. accurately reflects the
| source material, not someone's belief-based constraints)
|
| - prioritizes the sources that most succinctly explain the
| desired topic
|
| - And, sounds least like something generated by an LLM!
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