WikiRecipes

I found this discussion in looking up where my own site is in google. I've just started the site about 3 months ago, but it already has some great recipes. Please feel free to check us out and share your recipe with the rest of the world.

My partner and I have been working on a wiki recipe site for some time before we discovered this discussion. Although there is still some work to go on the site we would appreciate any suggestions and please submit your favorite recipes.

I think Wikirecipes would be a great idea. The wikibook is kind of obscure and it doesn't really fit anyway since it doesn't have chapters, chronology, etc. It's just a bunch of organized information. The recipes should all be organized into all of their catagories like wikiquotes instead of just being in one catagory. There should be some way to have multiple recipes for the same thing without being overly complicated or constantly changing the article. How do you officially propose to have a new wikimedia website? - Dimensiondude

(This is about literal recipes, for food dishes)

I am an idiot. I just noticed there is already a cooking wikibook started and there are recipes on Wikipedia. It seems a bit scattered. Perhaps a sister project is a good way to unify all this? Dgrant 08:59, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It'd be nice to have this divided by origin, like so: Chinese dishes Irish dishes American dishes etc.

And having nutritional information when possible

The wikibook is the right place, I think. Articles discussing cuisine should link to the book, not incorporate recipes themselves. MrJones 09:21, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I've always wanted a better recipe site.

Try the BBC. MrJones 09:21, 3 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

allrecipes.com and its problems

allrecipes.com is pretty good but the most annoying thing is that you can't edit them. Sometimes there can be unanimous agreement that a certain ingredient just doesn't belong in a certain dish...and there is no freedom to remove the ingredient and make it "optional".

Also if the timing is not quite right, people can use the discuss page to determine what is the best time for the recipe and then if a better time is decided upon, it can be changed.

On allrecipes.com, the best anyone can do is create a new recipe. That's why you sometimes have many recipes of the same thing, like Lasanga, Lasagna II, Lasanga III, where people have just made small adjustments to improve upon a previous one. Yet Lasanga has way more ratings then the other 2 recipes so it still gets more hits and gets used more....

Wikirecipes

It would be nice to have a site where there could be very standardized sets of recipes, for people who like to look up a recipe for something and find the most basic, traditional, standard recipe for something. These would be like "stable" recipes. Then there would be other recipes which could be considered unstable/testing, or "development" versions. These could be tried-and-true recipes, but they would just be different from the standard ones. 90% of recipes would be in the second category anyhow. I don't want to overemphasize this point...my point is that it's nice to be able to find basic things fast, instead of sifting through variations. Search for something like "curry" or "chicken curry" on google and you'll see what I mean. On wikirecipes the basic recipe for Spaghetti Bolognese for example could have some optional ingredients as well as links to recipes which vary significantly from the original, under "See also:".

It would be great if I could log on and edit someone else's recipe, to make it better, or copy it and make a variation. Or change the cooking time, etc...

Wikirecpies could also have lots of cooking information, about substiutions, spices, cooking methods (poaching, kneading, slow cooking, stir-frying...), which is why perhaps the name should be something like WikiCooking? Dgrant 08:01, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

There has already been talk about this over at Wikibooks. We have an outline for a Cookbook but a cookbook really doesn't fit with the educational purpose of Wikibooks. A separate project, tentatively called "Wikook", was proposed that would cover everything about food (not just recipes). Being too focused is a sure way to doom a project (remember the Sept11 Wiki?). See WikiBooks:Talk:Cookbook for more info. --Maveric149 19:49, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

How about calling the non-stable recipes "deviants"? R3m0t 15:18, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

You know you're in geek heaven when recipes start getting classed as stable, development and deviant! Perhaps medival recipes should be classed "deprecated"?! Jumbuck

Why not just have it in Wikipedia? It's scholarly in its own right, I've got nothing against them being there. - user:zanimum

Well they are in Wikipedia now, as interest in Wikibooks is low. Dgrant 20:52, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I agree with zanimum. Recipes are after all part of all human knowldge. -- 140.190.66.4

I don't believe that Wikipedia is about collecting all human knowledge, though. There's stuff that's appropriate and inappropriate for Wikipedia, and I'd probably say that collecting and organizing recipes is a different kinda thing. -- Evan 20:23, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I totally support the creation of WikiRecipe, but I want to call it Wikipe. - Calmypal 01:49, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

That might not be a great idea. A new user would find this confusing. However, a cool new name would be a great idea. Bake/back to the drawing board. -Pingveno 03:44, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Wikichef? - Calmypal 00:12, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Gastrowiki --80.58.55.170 01:38, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Please make it a policy to use Metric measurements first then, Imperial in parenthesis if you have to. There are 6.4 billion Metric users vs. only .3 billion Americans and less half of that, are Cooks. MetricCook 19:00, 19 December 2009 (UTC)MetricCook[reply]

There is probably infinite variety in cooking recipes. A normal cookbook can not coherently have thousand recipes on nearly the same thing, a food/cooking wiki can as the meritous weight of a recipe is left to the searcher. You can probably split the concept of cooking/food preperation in various parts. A normal cookbook doesn't cover cooking theory (in much depth) or food acquisition or presentation or the cultural implications of a recipe. If the wiki is limited to just recipes then recipes with have to link to other content sites/projects. A recipe wiki should be seperate from a cooking wiki perhaps because the vast mass of possible recipes could disbalance the focus of an overall cooking wiki (You've seen the effect happen to normal cookbooks). But recipes are not hollow static creations; they are made and remade by people. If a recipe wiki is applied, you will need more than a indication of similarity or intent attached to each recipe - you will likely need some way that creative articles such as recipes feedback into cooking concepts and cooking concepts feedback into recipes. A wiki, unlike a normal cookbook should be able to do this. Good cooks have reasons why they created a recipe or altered recipe; if this reasoning can be attached to each(?) recipe then a searcher could understand the recipe and intented result in the context of why the recipe was made/is good. - July 6 2004

I had this same idea about a WikiRecipes project yesterday. IMO the subject is large and varied enough to merit its own wiki and I don't think recipes really fit into Wikipedia (in fact, recipes get deleted in the Spanish Wikipedia) while Wikibooks is about writing books divided into chapters and volumes, such as language courses, instead of categorized entries. I like the name WikiChef too. Just in case this project gets started, I offer here an idea for a logo: a spoon and a fork placed on a V-like shape, a pair of chopsticks placed analogously, then both sets placed side by side forming a W (the Western spoon and fork on the left and the Eastern chopsticks on the right), and then crown this W with a chef hat. Uaxuctum 06:24, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

CookiWiki: a Wiki for Food, Recipes, and Cooking

Collecting recipes has been a long passion for me. Not seeing a great Wiki for recipes out there, I started one: www.cookiwiki.net I will be posting my recipes there, and I very much hope many people will contribute.

I am organizing the recipes by region of the world: in my opinion, all cooking is regional. I am mainly posting to the Italian section, since that's the cooking I know best. Categories then enable to find recipes of interest (vegetarian, easy to make, can be made with long-lasting ingredients (no shopping), can be frozen, etc). I would like also to have sections on ingredients, and I started a few. I don't want to overlap with the Wikipedia: I don't want to say what things are, but only describe their culinary aspects. For instance, I will not talk about what tomatoes are, but rather, of which kind of tomatoes are most suitable for which classes of recipes, for instance.

I very much hope many of you will welcome this new Wiki and will contribute to it.
Peter Lampione (plampione@mm.st), November 21, 2005.

Where from here?

There seems to be general agreement that a recipe wiki, based on the existing wikibook, would be a good idea. What are the requirements to actually get a project such as this started? TreveX 22:49, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I think in order to create a successful recipe wiki, there is going to have to be a better searching method in place than searching in a search bar, or hitting random page 100 times to get to something you have ingredients for, etc. One of my biggest complaints with looking at an online resource for recipes, is that 90% of the time, I'm looking for what to cook tonight. Having to run to the store, where I live, means a 45-minute trip, and that's not always cool. Here are some ideas that perhaps you folks can collaborate on.

Firstly, searching by ingredients is almost a must. It's also extremely useful to search for multiple ingredients. Setting up a main page for searching by ingredients could be done by having the main page filled, alphabetically, by ingredients. Following that link would bring you to A: a list of meals including the ingredient you just chose, and underneath that, B: A list of more ingredients. This list of ingredients would not point you to a blank page (For instance, if you chose Spaghetti, there wouldn't be "Molasses" in the new list of ingredients at the bottom of the page). In this way, you could continue to choose ingredients, and narrow down your options for a meal.

There are comments also about searching by region. Well, why not try another main page for searching regionally.

Also, what would be involved with having a "Cupboard" search page, where it displays a broad range of items you could have in your cupboards, fridge, freezer, etc. And the searcher would have the ability to check, or select, all the things they know they have on hand - and when completed, the search will display all meals you can make with what you have in your house.

Another great idea I think is a meal planner. What would be involved in making a way that you could choose 7 meals to have for the week, and have it export a list of things you need to buy at the grocery store. Talk about simplifying grocery shopping. Hop onto the Wiki Recipe site, pick your top 7 favorite meals, then it tells you what you need to go buy! You could create favorites, where people would be able to show their meal combinations, vote on them, etc.

Sure, the things I am describing would take some forethought, but I would think that a Recipe Wiki would be a little more than just 100,000 recipes. It needs to be an in-depth information source on how to prepare your meals, however it also needs to be useful. A 100,000-page cookbook of random recipes from all over the world needs to have some functionality behind it.

This is just my opinion, I'm curious to see how you all respond. Keitaro March 11, 2006

       I agree. I think every recipe should have specific metadata, so if I go to the section for Italian food, everything marked "Italian" is there, without someone having to manually put it there. If I go to Ingredients: Eggs, dishes with eggs should automatically be there. If I go to Cooking: Baked all food that is baked should be there. One thing that would need to be added is a rating system. Obviously, there is going to be more than one way to make any given dish so there should be a system where users "vote" on specific versions, so that the best one comes out on top in a search. There also needs to be a system to show all of the different versions and what is different about them. So I can look for "Belgian Waffles" and go to the top recipe, and then see more that might say Belgian Waffle - Baking Soda instead of Beaten Egg Whites, Belgian Waffle - Beaten Egg Whites Instead of baking soda, etc. This would be a very useful addition to Wikimedia, and would get a lot more ordinary people contributing, as a lot of people have their own recipes. - Dimensiondude

Another nice aspect would be categories for vegans, vegetarians, and those with hypoglycemia or allergies to common ingredients such as peanuts or wheat. A symbol or notation at the top of the recipe would save time and be appreciated by those with dietary restrictions. Reader July 2, 2007

A bit on reality of food

Food preparation as such, that has formed into cuisines can be considered a part of tradition for almost all cultures and infact of each family. Most recipe details, and cooking tips are passed down from generation to generation. Regular cooking in most countries is based upon local ingredients, which apart from anomalously named similarly, taste vastly different (Example being eggplant- they taste completely different in various parts of india, in usa and in uk ; another is milk -- tastes seriously different depending on the processing as well as source). There is absolutely no way that milk sold locally in india used to make sweets when presented as a recipe is going to stick if you used the pasteurized whole milk in united states. In a similar vein not all, and in fact not most cooking is always done on electric/gas stove tops or ovens. Many are not even difficult to hack and make them suitable for stove top/oven cooking. Taste of food is a description by humans. Its not well-captured by recipes that are limited to a particular language, a particular ingredient/methodology combo. Cooking is more descriptive and creative than the written language can provide. Taste is more individual, local than uniform; although one tasty dish and the trick to its tastiness is usually enjoyed across many cultures/individuals. Not all cultures around the world are as methodical as most of the western world. There are numerous cusines where the taste of the food does not depend so much on the exact quantity of the ingredient (an example being salt) or the exact time of cooking at a tempature( an example being grilling of a freshly hunted pheasant). Hence, IMHO, a Wikifoods ought to be created, where you can search for food based upon ingredients and where it was prepared using what(maybe overlaying something like wikimapia), maybe even videos and also if it was prepared someplace else using a different set of things to achieve similar results. -PolkaPink