Show HN: CookTime – Recipe index(letscooktime.com)
letscooktime.com
Show HN: CookTime – Recipe index
https://letscooktime.com
32 comments
A person by the name of Luke Smith actually started a project with a similar goal of aggregating recipes a while ago: https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/based.cooking
Here's the current site, albeit it's built in a fairly minimalist fashion: https://based.cooking/
I guess the entire initiative came out of complaining about modern web bloat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvDyQUpaFf4
Here he talks more about the actual site: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykNEkiYr0QM
Personally, i don't really enjoy his tone or vocabulary choices, but the site works and one has to admire creating lightweight websites, even if they're largely incompatible with the modern trends in content publishing.
Congrats on your site, though!
Here's the current site, albeit it's built in a fairly minimalist fashion: https://based.cooking/
I guess the entire initiative came out of complaining about modern web bloat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvDyQUpaFf4
Here he talks more about the actual site: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykNEkiYr0QM
Personally, i don't really enjoy his tone or vocabulary choices, but the site works and one has to admire creating lightweight websites, even if they're largely incompatible with the modern trends in content publishing.
Congrats on your site, though!
Ah. You won't like https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ then.
I use it as a showcase of how to make simple websites when they need to be simple.
I use it as a showcase of how to make simple websites when they need to be simple.
Don't forget about the spinoffs:
1) http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/
2) https://thebestmotherfucking.website/
Personally, i think that the sweet spot lies somewhere in the middle:
Here's my boring homepage, for example: https://kronis.dev/
The heaviest thing on it probably is the icon font (a legacy from the days past, from the Materialize library, instead of just SVG icons or even emojis), but it would absolutely exclude me from many front-end dev/designer positions (apart from the HTML/CSS being lazily written, of course).
1) http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/
2) https://thebestmotherfucking.website/
Personally, i think that the sweet spot lies somewhere in the middle:
- use a basic CSS framework to save time on design but without introducing too much bloat (e.g. Skeleton or PureCSS come to mind, maybe Bootstrap if you really really want to, instead of something heavier like Foundation)
- focus on simplicity in your site, don't get too caught up with dynamic elements (e.g. more like documents/forms rather than a visual experience)
- if you need complex form validations, you may use something like Vue, but consider proper bundle splitting; alternatively just do server side rendering if that's acceptable (especially if you want to support your site being used without JS)
- don't forget that you'll still absolutely be judged by your users - sites that look too old timey might just turn off some users from using your thing, just the way things are
Here's my boring homepage, for example: https://kronis.dev/
The heaviest thing on it probably is the icon font (a legacy from the days past, from the Materialize library, instead of just SVG icons or even emojis), but it would absolutely exclude me from many front-end dev/designer positions (apart from the HTML/CSS being lazily written, of course).
Yes, I should have added them, thanks.
The second one is the one I am for. When I finally start my blog (a 15 years effort so far) I will use that style.
I find the messy one too loaded :)
The second one is the one I am for. When I finally start my blog (a 15 years effort so far) I will use that style.
I find the messy one too loaded :)
The (food!)recipe site I find myself frequenting lately is:
https://www.tfrecipes.com/vmlinux-error-137/
Great idea - my personal favorite has been https://based.cooking, which accepts recipe submissions over PRs.
I've used the Glühwein (mulled wine) recipe from based cooking before, I recommend it.
This is a very common complaint on the internet, the introductory paragraphs of recipe blogs.
Yet, when I am looking for a recipe, I always look for the blogs. Why ? Because the alternative is a commercial website full of ads and trackers, trying to upsell me on paid features on every page.
Yes I have to scroll past an uninteresting paragraph, but it's much better than the alternative.
This new website might be more respectful of my privacy now, but it is yet to be seen what will change when/if they need to monetize it.
Yet, when I am looking for a recipe, I always look for the blogs. Why ? Because the alternative is a commercial website full of ads and trackers, trying to upsell me on paid features on every page.
Yes I have to scroll past an uninteresting paragraph, but it's much better than the alternative.
This new website might be more respectful of my privacy now, but it is yet to be seen what will change when/if they need to monetize it.
I don't understand this comment. Most blogs have ads on them for monetization. You may not notice them, but your brain did.
The site isn't loading right now, but regarding your description here:
> - Most recipe websites are what I call "mommy blogs", and the principal problem is that the recipe ingredient list and instructions are buried in a SEO-laden essay that we don't care about. We were sharing links to our favorite recipes, but links don't allow you to skip past the unnecessary essay prefacing the recipe. We knew we wanted a way to have recipes uncompromised by unrelated essays.
1) You may not want to advertise the site this way based on what happened to Recipeasly: https://www.today.com/food/recipeasly-recipe-website-taken-d...
2) While lots of people will doubtless be able to relate to this issue, you might want to find a more neutral phrase than "mommy blogs" which could potentially sound insulting or sexist to some users.
> - Most recipe websites are what I call "mommy blogs", and the principal problem is that the recipe ingredient list and instructions are buried in a SEO-laden essay that we don't care about. We were sharing links to our favorite recipes, but links don't allow you to skip past the unnecessary essay prefacing the recipe. We knew we wanted a way to have recipes uncompromised by unrelated essays.
1) You may not want to advertise the site this way based on what happened to Recipeasly: https://www.today.com/food/recipeasly-recipe-website-taken-d...
2) While lots of people will doubtless be able to relate to this issue, you might want to find a more neutral phrase than "mommy blogs" which could potentially sound insulting or sexist to some users.
VM size was increased, it should load now. Try again :)
1) Thanks, I'll keep this in mind. I don't understand the rage people have against not wanting to read the blog text. Maybe they should blog about something that makes me want to read the whole post instead of scrolling to the bottom past 1000 ads.
2) I'll stop calling them mommy blogs.Eh, I'd ignore the critics related to 1.
Facts are not copyrightable. (IANAL) Strip out the prose, API/schema/DDL it all away.
Your tool sounds orders of magnitudes more valuable to humanity than bloggers' random ramblings with a surprise recipe at the bottom.
Anyone who wants that, can literally and easily ignore your product and continue using the existing internet. SEO spam will only get worse.
Facts are not copyrightable. (IANAL) Strip out the prose, API/schema/DDL it all away.
Your tool sounds orders of magnitudes more valuable to humanity than bloggers' random ramblings with a surprise recipe at the bottom.
Anyone who wants that, can literally and easily ignore your product and continue using the existing internet. SEO spam will only get worse.
1) These people are not adding value by padding their recipes with self-absorbed prose. There will always be tools to strip away the superfluous ramblings, the bloggers should adapt to what people want, rather than lament the fact that no-one wants to hear about their faux-Proust recipe genesis stories.
With that out of the way, I’ve thought of the same website model as OP. I came to the conclusion that recipes would have to be contributed by users. It’s not right to scrape recipes from others blogs.
With that out of the way, I’ve thought of the same website model as OP. I came to the conclusion that recipes would have to be contributed by users. It’s not right to scrape recipes from others blogs.
It sounds like the blogging portions are usually added for SEO purposes since a lot of those people use their blogs as their job so they need to optimize for clicks, I don't view that as an issue even if the quality is debatable. Regardless of their reasoning, the concern isn't that it won't be as good without the blogging content, it's that the recipes people will add here will inevitably include some from other sites just missing their extra stuff, which means it's drawing away traffic from their original work without them getting any credit/ad revenue for it.
Yes! OP is being super condescending. And thus far, this amazing new paradigm in stealing recipes and posting them elsewhere on the internet isn't working as well as any of the "mommy blogs" OP complains about.
As much as I hate mommy blogs, these recipe aggregators are absolutely ignoring copyright. I would love to have an option other than mommy blogs. I would more than love this. If a recipe site that just presented the recipe and avoided the blog part was created for people to submit recipes, I'd be a huge fan. But all of these scrapers are just absolutely not something I can support based on the fact they are stealing other people's information.
I just want to clarify that CookTime is not an aggregator, it is exactly what you are asking for: a recipe website where people submit recipes, no blogs.
The issue is it's still going to end up doing some aggregating second hand as users copy recipes they've found on other websites to CookTime, it won't be the website itself doing it but I'd imagine they're still liable to legal action for serving those recipes, and could be asked to take them down under a threat of fines.
I'd expect they'd receive Section 230 protection from user generated content if it is truly user submitted versus raw web scraping.
The "fun" thing would be to growth hack your site by web scraping and then having that data posted under fake/bot accounts. Even more protection if you actually have bots from outside the company do it so there's some reasonable deniability. This is my level of pessimism from startup websites now.
The "fun" thing would be to growth hack your site by web scraping and then having that data posted under fake/bot accounts. Even more protection if you actually have bots from outside the company do it so there's some reasonable deniability. This is my level of pessimism from startup websites now.
Looks like that today.com site has also been taken down.
Counter-anecdote, it loads for me just fine.
> And many food bloggers expressed concerns that a website like Recipeasly could be hugely detrimental to this business model.
> And many food bloggers expressed concerns that a website like Recipeasly could be hugely detrimental to this business model.
Great idea, congrats. However, some observations: the first recipe I looked at listed the amount of water in ml, but the amount of flour in cups and stated the temperature in °F. Using cups and °F in Germany is not common: It would be great if one could switch to either ml/g/°C or oz/cups/°F.
Moreover, scaling is a great feature, but needs refinement: Nobody is helped by "13⁄16 tablespoon olive oil". Perhaps there should be a warning for scaled (baking) recipes as well, because more dough might need more time baking or will not behave as expected in very large or small quantities.
Nutrition information is based on "servings", but the number of servings used seems independent from the scaling of the recipe? E.g. Pizza Dough seems to be calculated in the base recipe as 10 servings, but if I scale it up to 5x, the nutrition label still mentions "10 servings" without any change. Same foe nutrition by ingredients.
Moreover, scaling is a great feature, but needs refinement: Nobody is helped by "13⁄16 tablespoon olive oil". Perhaps there should be a warning for scaled (baking) recipes as well, because more dough might need more time baking or will not behave as expected in very large or small quantities.
Nutrition information is based on "servings", but the number of servings used seems independent from the scaling of the recipe? E.g. Pizza Dough seems to be calculated in the base recipe as 10 servings, but if I scale it up to 5x, the nutrition label still mentions "10 servings" without any change. Same foe nutrition by ingredients.
Changing from metric to imperial in the ingredients should be easy enough to implement, it will take a little more work to parse through the text and change units found there. This will get added to the backlog.
I agree that using fractions during scaling is a little unhelpful, but we have not gotten consistent user feedback. Some people prefer fractions, some prefer decimals. I think it may be a healthy compromise to use fractions for non-metric units and decimals for metric units.
The nutrition per serving should not be affected if you make more or less of a recipe. The assumption is that you will divide a larger batch into the same sizes the original recipe would be served at. For a recipe like pizza, I guess it would make sense to scale the servings proportionally to the size of the pizza. I will think about how to implement this in a simple way.
Thanks for the feedback!!
I agree that using fractions during scaling is a little unhelpful, but we have not gotten consistent user feedback. Some people prefer fractions, some prefer decimals. I think it may be a healthy compromise to use fractions for non-metric units and decimals for metric units.
The nutrition per serving should not be affected if you make more or less of a recipe. The assumption is that you will divide a larger batch into the same sizes the original recipe would be served at. For a recipe like pizza, I guess it would make sense to scale the servings proportionally to the size of the pizza. I will think about how to implement this in a simple way.
Thanks for the feedback!!
Perhaps I was not precise about my comment on the nutrition information. It seems, under "nutrition facts" the text "x servings in this recipe" does not changed if you scale the recipe. You are right of cause that the size of a serving should not change, but the number of servings should. Same for "Nutrition by Ingredient": It stays static as well.
E.g. take pizza dough: Default is 10 servings and the base recipe calls for "2 ¼ teaspoon active dry yeast" -> nutrition facts shows: "2.25 teaspoon Active dry yeast - 2.25 teaspoon Leavening agents, yeast, baker's, active dry | 3 calories per serving". Now multiply the recipe, say for 40 servings. Recipe now calls for "9 teaspoon active dry yeast" (as expected). But nutrition by ingredient still shows: "2.25 teaspoon Active dry yeast - 2.25 teaspoon Leavening agents, yeast, baker's, active dry | 3 calories per serving" (not wrong, but kind of misleading). And "Nutrition Facts" still mentions "10 servings in recipe" instead of 40. HTH
E.g. take pizza dough: Default is 10 servings and the base recipe calls for "2 ¼ teaspoon active dry yeast" -> nutrition facts shows: "2.25 teaspoon Active dry yeast - 2.25 teaspoon Leavening agents, yeast, baker's, active dry | 3 calories per serving". Now multiply the recipe, say for 40 servings. Recipe now calls for "9 teaspoon active dry yeast" (as expected). But nutrition by ingredient still shows: "2.25 teaspoon Active dry yeast - 2.25 teaspoon Leavening agents, yeast, baker's, active dry | 3 calories per serving" (not wrong, but kind of misleading). And "Nutrition Facts" still mentions "10 servings in recipe" instead of 40. HTH
Got it, you're right, I will fix this.
Welcome to your first real-world performance test.
A little caching layer would go a long way here.
Based on how things are loading I'm claiming there's a max connections somewhere with some queuing mechanism.
Regardless, simple caching would avoid most of that stall. Never dismiss easy solutions to hard problems.
Based on how things are loading I'm claiming there's a max connections somewhere with some queuing mechanism.
Regardless, simple caching would avoid most of that stall. Never dismiss easy solutions to hard problems.
The site should use Google Structured Data for Recipes.
Always a good idea to check Google Structured Data to see if a format exists for the thing you're doing. Odds are Google has a format for you, and odds are it's a good format to adopt for a lot of reasons.
This format is what makes the nice recipe cards show up in Google Searches (https://www.google.com/search?q=pot+roast).
I get not wanting to have a "mommy blog" approach to content, but things like prep-time, cook-time, and just consistently formatted XML behind the scenes is good for your users.
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/structure...
Once you have it set up, it'll be easy to add in something like https://www.basketful.co/ and that'll make it easy for people to shop their local grocery store -- and give you a revenue source for your work.
Next up, you just need user reviews! (= This will also help you build a community... having a sign up, being able to email market to people when new recipes they might like come up, or just have a tool where you send them 3 choices a day for dinner options, and a "buy now" link to their favorite retailer.
Lots of good stuff you can do with this site. Nice work!
Always a good idea to check Google Structured Data to see if a format exists for the thing you're doing. Odds are Google has a format for you, and odds are it's a good format to adopt for a lot of reasons.
This format is what makes the nice recipe cards show up in Google Searches (https://www.google.com/search?q=pot+roast).
I get not wanting to have a "mommy blog" approach to content, but things like prep-time, cook-time, and just consistently formatted XML behind the scenes is good for your users.
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/structure...
Once you have it set up, it'll be easy to add in something like https://www.basketful.co/ and that'll make it easy for people to shop their local grocery store -- and give you a revenue source for your work.
Next up, you just need user reviews! (= This will also help you build a community... having a sign up, being able to email market to people when new recipes they might like come up, or just have a tool where you send them 3 choices a day for dinner options, and a "buy now" link to their favorite retailer.
Lots of good stuff you can do with this site. Nice work!
Thanks for the tip of the structured metadata, I will add this to the backlog.
Really useful tip about basketful, I'll follow up on this.
Reviews are just the tip of the iceberg! Favorites, lists, recommendations, etc... having accounts unlocks all of that.
Thanks for the feedback!
Really useful tip about basketful, I'll follow up on this.
Reviews are just the tip of the iceberg! Favorites, lists, recommendations, etc... having accounts unlocks all of that.
Thanks for the feedback!
Pleasantly surprised by the amount of plant-based dishes. You and your SO are vegan/vegetarian?
There are many great tools when it comes to recipes, it is just I am not all that excited about cooking, maintaining a recipe book, tracking nutrients. This goes for the vast majority of people. If I was you, I would track down users of similar apps and ask them what would make them use your spin on the idea, what they tried in the past, what they miss elsewhere, that is a must-have feature other apps/website already have... Get the insight who already uses a competing product. Couple of these people will give you more insights than whole HN. Look for hardships, explore desire.
A "prestige" might be a factor. Ability to have followers, achievements, the whole social shebang. I understand that might go against the principle of simple, just spitballing. As I said, I am not that person.
If you ask anyone on HN, they will tell you data portability, nobody wants to be locked in... that is nobody who is a nerd and cares about privacy, retention. Regular users (sadly) care much less. My mom likes to print out recipes from the Internet, paper is much easier to work with in a messy kitchen. Plus, the ability to generate good-looking PDFs doubles as a poor man's export.
I would add a mission statement, basically assure people the thing won't be gone in a year. If you can't, also good. Say it is an experiment, allow people to contact you, outline the plan, ideally address how are you planning to pay for hosting, if there are plans to monetize, introduce your kid.
That is all I got for you today, good luck!
There are many great tools when it comes to recipes, it is just I am not all that excited about cooking, maintaining a recipe book, tracking nutrients. This goes for the vast majority of people. If I was you, I would track down users of similar apps and ask them what would make them use your spin on the idea, what they tried in the past, what they miss elsewhere, that is a must-have feature other apps/website already have... Get the insight who already uses a competing product. Couple of these people will give you more insights than whole HN. Look for hardships, explore desire.
A "prestige" might be a factor. Ability to have followers, achievements, the whole social shebang. I understand that might go against the principle of simple, just spitballing. As I said, I am not that person.
If you ask anyone on HN, they will tell you data portability, nobody wants to be locked in... that is nobody who is a nerd and cares about privacy, retention. Regular users (sadly) care much less. My mom likes to print out recipes from the Internet, paper is much easier to work with in a messy kitchen. Plus, the ability to generate good-looking PDFs doubles as a poor man's export.
I would add a mission statement, basically assure people the thing won't be gone in a year. If you can't, also good. Say it is an experiment, allow people to contact you, outline the plan, ideally address how are you planning to pay for hosting, if there are plans to monetize, introduce your kid.
That is all I got for you today, good luck!
1. recipe scrape by url. most apps have this eg cozi, even pepperplate from 2013 did it.
2. talking of pepperplate, bulk import and export would be a great feature. every recipe app and site eventually dies and its incredibly painful to extract years of recipes and notes from generation N to import into N+1. For PP I had to resort to sqlite hackery.
3. multiple grocery lists, and a meal planning calendar. cozi is a ugly botch of an app with a ui that looks like 1992 but it does this well.
2. talking of pepperplate, bulk import and export would be a great feature. every recipe app and site eventually dies and its incredibly painful to extract years of recipes and notes from generation N to import into N+1. For PP I had to resort to sqlite hackery.
3. multiple grocery lists, and a meal planning calendar. cozi is a ugly botch of an app with a ui that looks like 1992 but it does this well.
I like the idea.
The "mommy blog" problem is real, I think a lot of it is people trying to create a brand for themselves, but honestly I don't care a bit about where you first tried this, who you met, what they were wearing or how your evening went. I also think that sometimes that's to do with copyright - it seems you may not be able to copyright just a recipe, but you can copyright all the rest of the narrative around it.
I'll check your site out...
The "mommy blog" problem is real, I think a lot of it is people trying to create a brand for themselves, but honestly I don't care a bit about where you first tried this, who you met, what they were wearing or how your evening went. I also think that sometimes that's to do with copyright - it seems you may not be able to copyright just a recipe, but you can copyright all the rest of the narrative around it.
I'll check your site out...
Maybe I'm in the minority with this but I prefer the introductory text. It often provides a bit of explanation and context to recipes. A recipe itself is worth little by itself, it's the annotations and suggestions and so forth that are useful sometimes.
There are badly written blogs, or manipulatively structured websites, but writing introductions per se isn't bad.
To be honest, the "mommy blog" epithet comes across as sexist to me.
No one would level that label at Kenji Lopez Alt or David Lebowitz but they use the same format:
https://www.seriouseats.com/classic-smashed-burgers-recipe
https://www.davidlebovitz.com/quiche-lorraine-recipe-recette...
You might object and say those are different because they're well-written and informative, but then isn't that my point?
There's nothing wrong with a "just the recipes" website — to each their own, and some things are useful in the right context. But there's also nothing wrong with a website that explains the recipes and tells a story along the way. You might not be interested, or it might not be that well-written, but that's the way written communication has always worked for eons.
There are badly written blogs, or manipulatively structured websites, but writing introductions per se isn't bad.
To be honest, the "mommy blog" epithet comes across as sexist to me.
No one would level that label at Kenji Lopez Alt or David Lebowitz but they use the same format:
https://www.seriouseats.com/classic-smashed-burgers-recipe
https://www.davidlebovitz.com/quiche-lorraine-recipe-recette...
You might object and say those are different because they're well-written and informative, but then isn't that my point?
There's nothing wrong with a "just the recipes" website — to each their own, and some things are useful in the right context. But there's also nothing wrong with a website that explains the recipes and tells a story along the way. You might not be interested, or it might not be that well-written, but that's the way written communication has always worked for eons.
> A recipe itself is worth little by itself,
When I'm looking for a way to cook a particular thing, the recipe is worth everything, and anything around it is simply a waste of my time and attention.
> No one would level that label at Kenji Lopez Alt or David Lebowitz but they use the same format. You might object and say those are different because they're well-written and informative
I'm absolutely not going to say they're different because they're well written and informative - if I'm just looking for the method and ingredients for a particular dish that I already know I want to cook, right now, which is 95%+ of my interaction with recipe websites, their text is equally useless and obstructive.
You're right 'mommy blog' might be the wrong term here, and may even be sexist, but it absolutely is a blog and honestly, I don't care. I'm here for the ingredients and mechanical instructions.
> there's also nothing wrong with a website that explains the recipes and tells a story along the way.
There's nothing 'wrong', it's not some grave sin to create such a thing, but it's certainly far less useful and not what I'm interested in.
> that's the way written communication has always worked for eons.
Sure, but I'm not looking for communication, I'm looking for a way to make quiche with as little distraction as possible. I'm making dinner, not reading your site for fun.
When I'm looking for a way to cook a particular thing, the recipe is worth everything, and anything around it is simply a waste of my time and attention.
> No one would level that label at Kenji Lopez Alt or David Lebowitz but they use the same format. You might object and say those are different because they're well-written and informative
I'm absolutely not going to say they're different because they're well written and informative - if I'm just looking for the method and ingredients for a particular dish that I already know I want to cook, right now, which is 95%+ of my interaction with recipe websites, their text is equally useless and obstructive.
You're right 'mommy blog' might be the wrong term here, and may even be sexist, but it absolutely is a blog and honestly, I don't care. I'm here for the ingredients and mechanical instructions.
> there's also nothing wrong with a website that explains the recipes and tells a story along the way.
There's nothing 'wrong', it's not some grave sin to create such a thing, but it's certainly far less useful and not what I'm interested in.
> that's the way written communication has always worked for eons.
Sure, but I'm not looking for communication, I'm looking for a way to make quiche with as little distraction as possible. I'm making dinner, not reading your site for fun.
I would consider those two "mommy blogs", though I will stop calling them that and instead use "food blogs". No offense against mothers, everyone has one.
Some people like the format of food blogs, most people don't. Every single person I talk to about CookTime immediately mentions how they love there is no backstory, context, literary prose they have to scroll through to get to a recipe. We are already solving the problem of too much food blog text on a page.
Some people like the format of food blogs, most people don't. Every single person I talk to about CookTime immediately mentions how they love there is no backstory, context, literary prose they have to scroll through to get to a recipe. We are already solving the problem of too much food blog text on a page.
I wonder if it's just two different approaches to the world.
In a transactional approach, I'm looking for the recipe; and just giving me the recipe (plus some useful tips for how to prepare the dish) is useful. "mommy blog" preamble is useless.
In a social approach.. food inherently exists in relation to people. -- Maybe it makes more sense in person to talk about the context of the meal you cooked, and it just doesn't translate to search engine result pages?
In a transactional approach, I'm looking for the recipe; and just giving me the recipe (plus some useful tips for how to prepare the dish) is useful. "mommy blog" preamble is useless.
In a social approach.. food inherently exists in relation to people. -- Maybe it makes more sense in person to talk about the context of the meal you cooked, and it just doesn't translate to search engine result pages?
Sure, and I do read food articles with lots of character sometimes, particularly from chefs or reviewers/critics on fairly mainstream/large sites like the guardian.
But I do that when I want to read something whimsical, informative or entertaining. 99% of the time, if I've found someone's cooking-blog it's because I want to cook something specific, right now!
I guess the annoyance is someone trying to sell me on one thing when I really want the other :)
But I do that when I want to read something whimsical, informative or entertaining. 99% of the time, if I've found someone's cooking-blog it's because I want to cook something specific, right now!
I guess the annoyance is someone trying to sell me on one thing when I really want the other :)
I don’t know anyone that enjoys the long blocks of text on recipe blogs. It’s not just the presence of the text that’s an issue but the fact that it buries the actual recipe at the bottom of a giant page so they can cram more ads in.
Hah, of course, the ads! It's not just building a brand, or copyright, it's the income stream from advertising. I really am shockingly naive sometimes :)
I heard it's also for SEO purposes, more keywords to show up in search engines
More time spent on the page, is the SEO benefit.
It feels melodramatic to call it a problem, but I agree it's very real and very annoying. Sometimes the actual recipe and the instructions will be scattered all around with a blog post in between. https://www.recipetineats.com/thai-green-curry/ This is a perfect example, while the introduction is informative and she doesn't go into great details to describe how she can "whip up an easy peasy tuesday night meal for her hubby". In the middle of cooking, I found myself on my phone, hopping back and forth between the measurements and the actual instructions trying to make sure I don't scorch anything. If I recall, reader mode stripped away important annotations that were embedded in CSS. The nail in the coffin being lots of annotations that I missed because I went the store bought paste route and didn't carefully read to see I was supposed to use 1 tbsp of fish sauce and not 3 like the homemade route.... I admit that was my fault, but it could've been organized easier and platforms enforce that consistency. I'm sure some people don't believe me and I come off as whiny, but I challenge you to follow this lol.....
Not to humiliate myself, but the level of visual boiler plates and JavaScript crap plagued on these run of the mill dynamic pages is akin to a porn site. And of course that's how high traffic sites operate, people want/need money. I look forward to aggregated recipe platforms. They're straight to the point and commentary is segregated. As others have said, recipes are usually not original content anyway.
I think there's a common preferrable layout for recipe pages and it goes:
Recipe > Instructions > Optional Summary
Not to humiliate myself, but the level of visual boiler plates and JavaScript crap plagued on these run of the mill dynamic pages is akin to a porn site. And of course that's how high traffic sites operate, people want/need money. I look forward to aggregated recipe platforms. They're straight to the point and commentary is segregated. As others have said, recipes are usually not original content anyway.
I think there's a common preferrable layout for recipe pages and it goes:
Recipe > Instructions > Optional Summary
I really don't care for it either, mostly because the shitty JavaScript the site it plagued with takes a million years to load and half breaks the site. However, I think the sheer popularity of this format means that someone lies it, even if not me.
> However, I think the sheer popularity of this format means that someone lies it, even if not me.
Search engines like it. That's the entire story.
There's good long-form recipe content, but nearly all of it's only there for SEO reasons. Most of these sites just make up the "genuine" stories so they have something for Google to chew on. No-one involved, reader or writer, cares about it, except search engines.
Search engines like it. That's the entire story.
There's good long-form recipe content, but nearly all of it's only there for SEO reasons. Most of these sites just make up the "genuine" stories so they have something for Google to chew on. No-one involved, reader or writer, cares about it, except search engines.
Just wanted to clarify, is the the shitty javascript the CookTime javascript or the other website's? We're not the best frontend programmers, any feedback is welcome.
Shitty JavaScript on the "mommy blogs." They are text with a few pictures - JavaScript should be extremely minimal on that sort of site.
I wouldn't very much mind all the extra text if the JavaScript didn't interfere so much.
I wouldn't very much mind all the extra text if the JavaScript didn't interfere so much.
Recipes have a bit of a problem in that there's a pull from two opposite directions at once--everyone is annoyed that they have irrelevant cruft, but selling the sizzle and not the steak is part of the best recipes. If you drift too much to the just-the-facts side, you're going to fade into obscurity.
Sure seems really similar to http://copymethat.com
Thanks for introducing me to this website. Looking through it, we seem to provide similar features. However copymethat.com is missing calculating nutrition information, and most of its paid features are free features of CookTime. Given a few days, I think we could match and then exceed the features of copymethat.com
sigh
As far as I can tell, copymethat let me create an account with my email, but didn't actually confirm that I own the email. It's one of my pet peeves now.
As far as I can tell, copymethat let me create an account with my email, but didn't actually confirm that I own the email. It's one of my pet peeves now.
I find your title and discussion of “mommy blogs” to be extremely misogynistic. This has no place on hacker news.
I work at https://fitchef.nl (Dutch site), that has some overlap.
Only had a quick glance at the logged out sits, but nice work!
Who are you aiming for most with this site? People who'd like to lose weight and use this as a tool? Or perhaps the sporty person who'se very aware of the nutrition values, etc?
As for commercial potential, you can try provide our service of offering weekly mealplans. It requires a bit of work to do this well, but also a fun technical challenge :).
What is not (yet?) our focus, but what I think would be cool, is to focus in on a niche of specific patients who have special diet needs.
Only had a quick glance at the logged out sits, but nice work!
Who are you aiming for most with this site? People who'd like to lose weight and use this as a tool? Or perhaps the sporty person who'se very aware of the nutrition values, etc?
As for commercial potential, you can try provide our service of offering weekly mealplans. It requires a bit of work to do this well, but also a fun technical challenge :).
What is not (yet?) our focus, but what I think would be cool, is to focus in on a niche of specific patients who have special diet needs.
Very nice site!
Not sure where you're sourcing your recipes from, but just as a heads up - someone tried this a while back by scraping sites to just pull the recipes and there was an uproar by all of the "mommy blogs".
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56241653
I personally don't see anything wrong with this, as I too hate these food recipe sites telling stories just to get adsense clicks.
Not sure where you're sourcing your recipes from, but just as a heads up - someone tried this a while back by scraping sites to just pull the recipes and there was an uproar by all of the "mommy blogs".
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56241653
I personally don't see anything wrong with this, as I too hate these food recipe sites telling stories just to get adsense clicks.
I think to avoid this fate, we will not implement scraping or import features. Recipes have to be entered by individual email-authenticated users.
One small purchase I made when I discovered coffee during covid was the use of a kitchen scale to increase consistency of my brews.
I wanted to extend this to other common kitchen tasks like making crepes or pancakes, but to my dismay I found that almost all recipes use cups and teaspoons.
I did end of finding one recipe, and it turned out the most consistent crepes I've ever made. Sadly I can't find that site again!
Let's hope metric measurements are supported on your site!
I wanted to extend this to other common kitchen tasks like making crepes or pancakes, but to my dismay I found that almost all recipes use cups and teaspoons.
I did end of finding one recipe, and it turned out the most consistent crepes I've ever made. Sadly I can't find that site again!
Let's hope metric measurements are supported on your site!
Hey thanks for the feedback! The USDA dataset of ingredients we use has enough information for most ingredients to calculate a mass per volume density (kg/L). We have it in our backlog to give users a toggle between mass and volume units so they can use whatever measuring instrument they have in their kitchen. This will be implemented soon!
Automatic volume to mass conversions are now supported. Take a look at this recipe for an example: https://letscooktime.com/Recipes/Details?id=f2e05068-83e0-45...
Does that help?
Does that help?
> Ingredient highlights in recipe text
Does this mean the recipe instructions actually say the quantity of the item when they mention it in the recipe? I've really wanted that, I hate having to go back and forth between the instructions and the ingredients just because I didn't feel like doing mise en place (not every recipe requires that, and I'm not about to dirty a bunch more dishes just to get things ready).
Does this mean the recipe instructions actually say the quantity of the item when they mention it in the recipe? I've really wanted that, I hate having to go back and forth between the instructions and the ingredients just because I didn't feel like doing mise en place (not every recipe requires that, and I'm not about to dirty a bunch more dishes just to get things ready).
> Does this mean the recipe instructions actually say the quantity of the item when they mention it in the recipe?
Yes! On a phone you have to tap the highlighted ingredient, on a desktop browser you have to mouse over the highlighted text.
Yes! On a phone you have to tap the highlighted ingredient, on a desktop browser you have to mouse over the highlighted text.
Pro tip: even the worst of those fake-story-before-the-recipe sites usually include the micro format for recipe markup, which means all kinds of existing systems/software can reliably and quickly strip all the crap and give you just the recipe. I use Paprika3, but I bet there are simple browser extensions that can do it, too, like a Reader Mode for recipes.
Some but not all :) It's in the backlog to add semantic attributes for the recipe.
Minor feedback: please remove password requirements, it's annoying.
My case: I couldn't care less if my recipes account gets 'hacked'. I just want to use my usual 9 letter password for services I don't care for securing. Heck, if I could just enter my email and anyone else could too that'd be fine by me.
My case: I couldn't care less if my recipes account gets 'hacked'. I just want to use my usual 9 letter password for services I don't care for securing. Heck, if I could just enter my email and anyone else could too that'd be fine by me.
Will do! Keeping passwords simple and avoiding 2FA forces us to not collect any sensitive information but honestly that's a good thing. I don't want to have to implement all data protection regulation controls on a recipe website.
Thank you for tagging the plant-based recipes! My wife is vegan, so I'm always looking out for good recipes.
Love the design, very clean and simply! Has everything I need, and nothing more. Looks like you got the server load under control too. Bookmarking this
You'll be doing yourself a huge favor if you drop the phrase "mommy blog" from this pitch entirely.
Will do, I'll just refer to them as "food blogs" from now on.
Thanks for the link! I see that this site is no longer active, but this is very similar to our vision. Do you use this website?
I did. I found this site ages ago (like 15 years ago) and liked how simple it was. Maybe you can find stuff on it to add to your site. I like your UX/UI a lot!
This is a major accessibility issue. Try looking up a recipe using a screen reader.
Hey sorry to hear that, I do care about accessibility. I'll try using a screen reader to see how the site could be made more accessible.
I want to be clear that I wasn't criticizing your site, I like it a lot! My comment was with respect to all the other recipe sites that have 15 paragraphs of fluff and ads before they get to the actual information.
I'm glad you also care about accessibility so here is some, I hope, constructive feedback. The site is already considerably better with a screen reader than other recipe sites. Poking at it with VoiceOver on I noticed a few things. I'm looking at the Açai Bowl page, but I presume most if not all of the following will apply more generally.
1) The alt text for the picture of the dish is a GUID or something. A brief description of the image would be better.
2) The little calculator icon next to the kcal doesn't have any description.
3) The plus and minus buttons are described correctly, but there is an odd one second pause between it saying "button" and then "add" or "minus." At first this made me think it was just going to be described as "button" which is common on many sites and apps.
4) Various snippets of text, such as the ingredients and the nutrition facts are split in such a way that VoiceOver recognizes them as separate elements. So instead of reading "One tablespoon milk powder" it reads "1" "tablespoon" "milk powder" as the user swipes through each element. This last issue doesn't seriously impact usability.
I'm glad you also care about accessibility so here is some, I hope, constructive feedback. The site is already considerably better with a screen reader than other recipe sites. Poking at it with VoiceOver on I noticed a few things. I'm looking at the Açai Bowl page, but I presume most if not all of the following will apply more generally.
1) The alt text for the picture of the dish is a GUID or something. A brief description of the image would be better.
2) The little calculator icon next to the kcal doesn't have any description.
3) The plus and minus buttons are described correctly, but there is an odd one second pause between it saying "button" and then "add" or "minus." At first this made me think it was just going to be described as "button" which is common on many sites and apps.
4) Various snippets of text, such as the ingredients and the nutrition facts are split in such a way that VoiceOver recognizes them as separate elements. So instead of reading "One tablespoon milk powder" it reads "1" "tablespoon" "milk powder" as the user swipes through each element. This last issue doesn't seriously impact usability.
Was the domain registered in the last 30 days? Because I can’t view the site.
whois says created 2022-04-09T22:31:38Z
what is stopping domains registered in the last 30 days from showing?
The site times out for me as well in firefox, but also in curl. i think it is broken
what is stopping domains registered in the last 30 days from showing?
The site times out for me as well in firefox, but also in curl. i think it is broken
I use NextDNS and it blocks domains registered recently to avoid phishing scams.
> Block Newly Registered Domains (NRDs)
> Block domains registered less than 30 days ago. Those domains are known to be favored by threat actors to launch malicious campaigns.
> Block Newly Registered Domains (NRDs)
> Block domains registered less than 30 days ago. Those domains are known to be favored by threat actors to launch malicious campaigns.
So, you know your DNS infrastructure deliberately has this limitation, but instead of checking yourself you asked the author on a public comments thread? Seems rather lazy, especially given the “check yourself” option is so quick and produces an instant result.
I was on my phone at the time so I was being lazy. Sorry. Last couple of times this happened I just checked.
:(
:(
It was recently registered, this is the first I hear of using DNS novelty as an attack vector :( Maybe wait 10 days and try again?
I really like the concept(!)
I have been looking around for something like this, but selfhosted (any chance of it being opensourced?)
I learned about this site from a comment in another HN thread, thus did not read your "ShowHN" intro. After visiting the site I could see what it was about (looks great), but I was not able to quickly find a description of the concept, thus what to expect, what is required etc.
So here's my feedback: 1. Promote the "ShowHN" blog post https://letscooktime.com/Blog/2022/04/29/hn-post.html (that I eventually found and read) to the "About" page thus let people like me answer the why, who, when etc questions.
2. Will the site be worth investing in for me? If I start adding my own recipies there, can I export my data eg. to a local backup? I know everything is being cloudified these days, but I'm old school and I know that nothing is for ever, even the good stuff. It's possible that you loose interest in the project or (hopefully not) an accident occurs with the sideeffect of the site being terminated. One comment in the other thread was about another similair site that was terminated, hence data was lost for the end users perspective.
3. Units In Denmark (an likely in the rest of Europa) the use of "cups" is not de facto, in stead volume measurements are used (for small amounts) or weight (for large amounts). Eg. in stead of 1/3 cup, then ~80ml would be used (well 78,66...) and when baking use 1kg of flour
Farenheit versus Centigrades Is it possible to auto detect Farenheit and get it converted to Centigrades (or vice versa), either by auto detecting it and adding the other value in parens? I typically see it refernced as '425°F' or 425F, so a regex might do the trick.
For large values (either via scaling the recipe or when a lot is needed for a normal serving) Eg.: https://letscooktime.com/Recipes/Details?id=f9b12e31-c6fa-47... '1 gallon (22656 grams) apple juice' You should use the appropriate unit (> 1.000 grams => kg ...) NB.: Something must be wrong with this conversion as 1 (us) gallon (~3,785 l) is not the equivalent of 22,656 kg, more likely ~3,785 kg), thus 'x6'.
Nitpick: I prefer 'l' in stead of the 'L' as the unit of "litre" as it looks nicer: 'ml' versus 'mL'
4. User settings I have yet to create an account so I am unaware if these features already exist, so sorry if this do not apply. If one is not interested in the nutricion data, it would be nice to have a preference that turns displaying this off (both 'Nutricion Facts' as well as 'Nutricion by Ingredient').
Support "locale" or even better, allow a setting that defines how to represent values (again in dk/europa we use `.´ as a thousand seperator and `,´ as a decimal point - the US is opposit (I'd have to say wrong ;-)
5. Incorrect conversions Something is wrong with the conversions. In this recipe https://letscooktime.com/Recipes/Details?id=2474dfcc-7804-4e... '350 ml' water is referred to as '35 grams' (where it should be 350 grams, thus 10x)
Also see the example in 3)
6. Index (original serving size) It might be nice to know the original size if one often scales up as you'd like to know how much off the sizes might be (x2 - x4 is ok, but at x10 soe values might get off). I know I can F5 to get the original recipe (which I presume is in the originally size asd it was entered).
I learned about this site from a comment in another HN thread, thus did not read your "ShowHN" intro. After visiting the site I could see what it was about (looks great), but I was not able to quickly find a description of the concept, thus what to expect, what is required etc.
So here's my feedback: 1. Promote the "ShowHN" blog post https://letscooktime.com/Blog/2022/04/29/hn-post.html (that I eventually found and read) to the "About" page thus let people like me answer the why, who, when etc questions.
2. Will the site be worth investing in for me? If I start adding my own recipies there, can I export my data eg. to a local backup? I know everything is being cloudified these days, but I'm old school and I know that nothing is for ever, even the good stuff. It's possible that you loose interest in the project or (hopefully not) an accident occurs with the sideeffect of the site being terminated. One comment in the other thread was about another similair site that was terminated, hence data was lost for the end users perspective.
3. Units In Denmark (an likely in the rest of Europa) the use of "cups" is not de facto, in stead volume measurements are used (for small amounts) or weight (for large amounts). Eg. in stead of 1/3 cup, then ~80ml would be used (well 78,66...) and when baking use 1kg of flour
Farenheit versus Centigrades Is it possible to auto detect Farenheit and get it converted to Centigrades (or vice versa), either by auto detecting it and adding the other value in parens? I typically see it refernced as '425°F' or 425F, so a regex might do the trick.
For large values (either via scaling the recipe or when a lot is needed for a normal serving) Eg.: https://letscooktime.com/Recipes/Details?id=f9b12e31-c6fa-47... '1 gallon (22656 grams) apple juice' You should use the appropriate unit (> 1.000 grams => kg ...) NB.: Something must be wrong with this conversion as 1 (us) gallon (~3,785 l) is not the equivalent of 22,656 kg, more likely ~3,785 kg), thus 'x6'.
Nitpick: I prefer 'l' in stead of the 'L' as the unit of "litre" as it looks nicer: 'ml' versus 'mL'
4. User settings I have yet to create an account so I am unaware if these features already exist, so sorry if this do not apply. If one is not interested in the nutricion data, it would be nice to have a preference that turns displaying this off (both 'Nutricion Facts' as well as 'Nutricion by Ingredient').
Support "locale" or even better, allow a setting that defines how to represent values (again in dk/europa we use `.´ as a thousand seperator and `,´ as a decimal point - the US is opposit (I'd have to say wrong ;-)
5. Incorrect conversions Something is wrong with the conversions. In this recipe https://letscooktime.com/Recipes/Details?id=2474dfcc-7804-4e... '350 ml' water is referred to as '35 grams' (where it should be 350 grams, thus 10x)
Also see the example in 3)
6. Index (original serving size) It might be nice to know the original size if one often scales up as you'd like to know how much off the sizes might be (x2 - x4 is ok, but at x10 soe values might get off). I know I can F5 to get the original recipe (which I presume is in the originally size asd it was entered).
I have planned, no I've been working on something like this but like so many pet projects it's not finished yet and now the frontend libraries have advanced so much that I have to almost restart the project, at least the Angular frontend.
Where do you receive the nutrition information from?
What is this: hxxps://az416426.vo.msecnd.net/scripts/a/ai.0.js ? And why is it there? It was adblocked by my browser. I see... telemetry... of course a new website needs telemetry... not like you can't do this already with a logging middleware, no you have to push azure cloud telemetry down your visitor's throats/browser.
The site is very slow.
Also I'm not buying the story.
Where do you receive the nutrition information from?
What is this: hxxps://az416426.vo.msecnd.net/scripts/a/ai.0.js ? And why is it there? It was adblocked by my browser. I see... telemetry... of course a new website needs telemetry... not like you can't do this already with a logging middleware, no you have to push azure cloud telemetry down your visitor's throats/browser.
The site is very slow.
Also I'm not buying the story.
The nutrition information comes from publicly available USDA data https://fdc.nal.usda.gov
That script you ad-blocked is injected by Application Insights in Azure. We use Application Insights as our APM system, but of course you're free to ad-block it.
I increased our VM size after the HN traffic wave, it should be better now.
Ok, sorry to hear that :) it's a true story.
That script you ad-blocked is injected by Application Insights in Azure. We use Application Insights as our APM system, but of course you're free to ad-block it.
I increased our VM size after the HN traffic wave, it should be better now.
Ok, sorry to hear that :) it's a true story.
The guy launched. It looks great. It works well. Maybe consider being a bit kinder.
Bit unnecessarily brutal there…
"grrrr, I sure hate how the people providing free recipes for me make me scroll twice to view the recipe"
Super gross framing, especially when you're yanking the content those other people actually created to siphon off their traffic.
Super gross framing, especially when you're yanking the content those other people actually created to siphon off their traffic.
There is no copyright on recipes; this is why the SEO laden essays exist. You can just steal recipes, because no one owns them anyway.
Given the choice between a recipe site that has a thousand words about someone's grandmother or a recipe site that divides the ingredients by two, I'll choose the latter.
Given the choice between a recipe site that has a thousand words about someone's grandmother or a recipe site that divides the ingredients by two, I'll choose the latter.
Recipes specifically are not copyrighted because no lawmaker wants to throw grandma in jail for copying the side of a box. I think they technically count as "facts" which aren't copyrightable (e.g. whisking egg whites and sugar is going to eventually get you a meringue)
A lot of "secret" family recipes usually have their origin in something like this.
A lot of "secret" family recipes usually have their origin in something like this.
Something being legal doesn't make it ethical. I'm also disgusted by this attitude of "screw you and the labor you invested to create and share this recipe."
> Super gross
Incredibly unhelpful and hostile way to start your argument, especially because you chose to put words in the author's mouth as well. Why even respond if all you have are emotional appeals to make people feel bad about their hard work providing something folks clearly want?
Incredibly unhelpful and hostile way to start your argument, especially because you chose to put words in the author's mouth as well. Why even respond if all you have are emotional appeals to make people feel bad about their hard work providing something folks clearly want?
99.99% of that content was stolen in the first place.
Most of those recipe sites, no-one involved in the site has ever cooked the recipe, despite what the ghost-written made-up story about it would lead you to believe. That's why so many have obvious mistakes in them.
Most of those recipe sites, no-one involved in the site has ever cooked the recipe, despite what the ghost-written made-up story about it would lead you to believe. That's why so many have obvious mistakes in them.
> you're yanking the content those other people actually created
I didn't get the impression they were directly scraping other sites.
Also, it is very unlikely the recipe originated from those posters. I would guess those people learned the recipe from friends/family/cookbook/website, made some small modifications, then re-posted it in blog format.
I find searching for recipes online to be difficult for the same reasons they mentioned and I appreciate the attempt at another solution. Hope this one catches on.
I didn't get the impression they were directly scraping other sites.
Also, it is very unlikely the recipe originated from those posters. I would guess those people learned the recipe from friends/family/cookbook/website, made some small modifications, then re-posted it in blog format.
I find searching for recipes online to be difficult for the same reasons they mentioned and I appreciate the attempt at another solution. Hope this one catches on.
You're right we are not scraping other websites. We rely on users recipes, maybe they copy the recipe from websites they like or it comes from their minds or their family cookbook; we don't care as long as its on the website.
Thanks for the feedback!
Thanks for the feedback!
Given a great many of them are repeating thing others have given them, or often taking things from other pages, without giving credit, they are hardly in a position to complain.
I know two wrongs don't make a right, but neither does one so by taking again the amount of rights in the world has not decreased.
I know two wrongs don't make a right, but neither does one so by taking again the amount of rights in the world has not decreased.
COVID lockdowns made me and my wife cook a lot more at home, and we had a need to streamline our recipe management woes. These were some of the problems we identified:
After a few months of nights and weekends, we are ready to share https://letscooktime.com . We solved all of the primary problems listed above, and more! Our features:
We think the closest thing to CookTime is https://www.paprikaapp.com. Paprika is a paid native app, CookTime is a free mobile-ready website you can try _today_. I do not believe that recipe management really requires the performance, development cost, and App Store cost of a native app.
Without a CookTime account, you can:
With a CookTime account, you can:
Let me know what you think! Would you use it? What are you currently using to track your recipes? What missing feature is stopping you from using CookTime?