https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017089-maple-shortbread...
Outside of a story like that, there is no reason to include war in your recipe. Cooking is about nurturing and sustaining homeostasis. There is something fundamentally wrong about taking other people's suffering and making it about one self -- it is narcissistic which spoils like cookies made with butter after several weeks of travel.
A more major point is that I don't seem to be able to select text to copy and paste. I had to type out "391.32 gram strained greek yogurt" like some sort of caveman. And that makes me wonder what a screen reader would make of it...
These are much easier to measure, scale, and remember. There are very few contexts where minute differences matter, and I don't think you're going to find a material crossover figure between those that want recipe help and those that are working on the kind of stuff where it matters.
King Arthur Flour have a short video[0] demonstrating the wildly different weight measurements from measuring a "cup" (the same cup size across samples).
Measuring liquids by volume is totally fine because you generally won't get a large difference between two different cups of water (although I still generally measure that by weight as a personal preference).
For things like sauces or marinades, you use a much smaller amount, and approximate is generally fine.
But-- if you use weight measurements and attend to precision, you'll have to adjust a lot less and you'll come much closer to the best possible output.
And the numbers kept changing even when the scale was empty. I think I had a whole conversation with my grandpa about why that was happening, and we came up with "probably just variations in air/breeze around the scale causing them to change"
No idea if that's actually what it was, but it's plausible if you're doing sub-gram weighing?
Yes, even dust particles landing on the scale can impact the reading, which is why when you're measuring really small things and want to be precise, you usually have a little glass/plastic cube around the entire thing too.
Also frequently used for people who measure drugs for various purposes.
These weighing instruments with draft shields are usually called analytical balances: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_balance
But with such scales, low sample rates and averaging are key.
Mine takes a little while to notice when I'm adding something like a tenth of a gram of yeast to a recipe.
This was a scale in a jeweler in India. It might have been in the late 80s or mid-90s. I might be misremembering too. So take my anecdote with a grain of salt.
Oh, come on. Surely the scale wasn't that precise.
This seems likely to me.
Regarding selection of text, that has been a problem with flutter. I will find a way to make it selectable.
There is an alternative. You can share the recipe or click print. There you would be able to select it.
Or, you could share the recipe and it would be copied to your clipboard.
I know that is not exactly what you want, but it will solve the purpose for now.
I'll fix it soon. Apologies.
Another thing: although not strictly metric, but European recipes also use tablespoon and teaspoon as measurements for smaller volumes, so no need to convert this.
Just my two cents, other than that very nice work!!
1. People are bad at measuring volume. This has been tested. There is much more variance in amounts measured by volume than be weight. See "science and cooking" (ferran adria).
2. Using a scale means doing a lot fewer dishes! (measuring cups, spoons, etc.)
3. It's faster, try it!
Hmmm... What kind of cup? :-)
US "legal" cup (240ml)
US customary cup (246,6ml)
metric cup (250ml)
UK cup (170,5ml)
edit: fixed typo 150ml -> 250ml
Also the ability to halve recipes would be great, sometimes you just want to make less.
Will make these changes and release soon.
That's a great insight. I'd definitely look into it.
Thank you
Have a recipe of the day. Rotated per 24 hours.
So we can all enjoy and refine a recipe together
When I sign up, I get an error when confirming my email: This site can’t be reached The webpage at https://api.onlyrecipeapp.com/?code=XXX
Good work, looks very promising.
That's a reverse proxy configuration error. I just fixed it.
Please try registering again.
Some nits/notes:
- Browser history seems to go in a circle (at least in Chrome); try use the browser's native "back" arrow a few times after clicking through the link you shared from HN.
- Transition animations and element "load-in" animations make the whole thing feel slow and hard to use. As it is, I'm frustrated trying to look through recipes or moving through pages.
You have confirmed the two issues that others are also facing.
I'll definitely look into this
Curious as to how you get around some of the anti-scraping measures like Cloudflare. I put in a recipe blog (https://www.maangchi.com) that usually blocks me with Cloudflare but your site was able to scrape it just fine.
Edit: also as a very minor point your counter on how many recipes have been imported seems to keep going up each time I try to visit the same recipe. It says I've converted 5 but I've just tried to visit the same recipe 5 times.
The linked recipe is a great example. The 1/2 teaspoon in step 1 is never modified regardless of the scale of the recipe.
Also scale should go below 1 (like .5).
growing up, we had the old red/white gingham Betty Crocker cookbook where the scaled measurements were written in the book. the instructions never had any of the measurements in them. based on that, it just feels natural to the point of adding the scaling into the instructions seems overly complicated. just took a look at couple of other recipe examples, and they all leave out the measurements in the instructions.
1. I'll often use the ingredients list (and quantities there) before cooking to ensure that I have everything I need ahead of time. Depending on what ingredient it is, I might not mise en place it. In those cases, a step that says "add ingredient" would require me to go reference the list in the beginning, losing a bit of context.
2. It's not often, but I've followed a few recipes that require a particular ingredient in 2 different steps in different amounts.
Example: https://imgur.com/7qXRNTH
I created an account, but when I clicked on the confirmation link in the resulting E-mail, it took me to a log-in page that said, "Sign in to api.onlyrecipe.com:443.
I wasn't surprised when I used my sign-up info and got nothing but a Kong error for my troubles. So... looks like sign-up is not yet working.
- instead of grams I would like also tell me how many americano coffee cups more or less than looking for scale.
- I wanna scale down - if serving is for 6 people i want to scale down to to servings
One aspect that I've been really wrestling with is how can we make the end user experience of seeing a recipe better, while still providing meaningful income to the recipe creators who labor so much to share their stuff with us. I'd be interested in your thoughts on this. That to me would be the very meaningful, positive change: that end users get a better experience, and creators get paid. That's been my overarching goal and motivation.
Thank you
Chef John doesn't
This page probably does not have the standard recipe attributes that are needed for parsing the recipe.
I am adding a fallback mechanism for such cases. The text will be parsed using LLM like ChatGPT.
Should be released by tomorrow. Cheers!
[comment about issue that is present in original recipe removed]
I posted the first version of OnlyRecipe here about four years ago [1], and the response was incredible. The feedback in that thread shaped a lot of what I wanted to build next. That initial momentum proved that the core problem (ads, life stories, and clutter on recipe blogs) needed a solution.
Progress since then has been slower than I hoped — I had some health issues and was building on and off — but I kept coming back to this project because I genuinely love working on it. I’ve been working on the project on and off, fitting development in whenever I could. This post represents a huge personal milestone.
Here’s what’s new after all this time:
Import from Videos: Import directly from TikTok, Instagram, Youtube and Facebook videos
Import from Handwritten recipes: Import from handwritten notes and screenshots
Unit Conversion: A highly-requested feature. Instantly convert US Customary (cups/oz) to Metric (grams/ml) for any extracted recipe.
Grocery Lists: Consolidate ingredients from multiple saved recipes into a single, clean shopping list.
Meal Plan: Plan your weekly meals in advance
Controls: Full recipe editing, PDF export, printing, and cross-device sync
Mobile-First Design: While the web view (linked above) is great for quickly seeing the result, the mobile apps have dedicated native controls for cooking mode (e.g., screen stay-awake, timers, and offline access).
In-App Browser: Directly import from any site within the app and many more...
To see these features in action quickly (small gif/videos), check it out on the landing page [2]
The link above is a deep link to a live demo on the web app.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the new utility features and the performance of the parser! Try it out here [5]
[1] Original post from Jan 2022: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29795482
[2] Landing Page: https://get.onlyrecipeapp.com
[3] iOS App: https://apps.apple.com/in/app/only-recipe/id1602130759
[4] Android App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nsqr.onlyr...
[5] Web app: https://onlyrecipeapp.com
- many recipe sites let you check/uncheck things you want to print. I'd love to print just [ name, ingredients, instructions ] without [ photo, metadata/servings/nutrition/etc. ]. I much prefer one page recipes to two pages.
- on desktop, some text-break like "6 servings" breaks to 2 lines
Thank you for pointing it out
There are many learnings:
1. The most unexpected thing that I learned was the absolute nightmare it is to set up subscriptions.
I initially thought it would be a simple task. I started off with writing APIs and webhooks for Play store and App store.
But then as I got into the specifics things got complicated very quickly.
The combinations of subscriptions (monthly/yearly, AI and non-AI), cancellations, cross device subscription sync, how to handle trials, how to manage subscription states of users, and then when users upgrade, that's another few cases to handle.
There were just too many cases to handle.
I then just used a third-party provider (RevenueCat). They have handled all the complexities beautifully.
2. Supabase self-host is another nightmare in itself. Just the sheer amount of configs needs (through the .env file) is insane. They have intentionally made it so difficult to configure.
3. Setting up SMTP and sending emails is actually a very tiring and cumbersome process. AWS SES is just too much work. Mainly the domain reputation (emails always landing in spam) and also there are not many providers that give a generous trial.
I have actually added same transition as mobile apps. But there shouldn't be lags ideally. I'll have a look.
Conversion, Scaling, and Measurement
Conversion to weights from volume (e.g., converting '1 cup of flour' to grams). One developer noted they'd look into generic conversion feasibility.
Scaling a recipe (e.g., adjusting ingredients for 1.5x or 2x the batch size).
Unit Choice: Offering a clear choice between metric and imperial units.
Unit Specificity: The ability to differentiate between US and non-US cups for accurate conversions.
Data Structure: Displaying ingredient data with consistent units in a database to enable easy batch size adjustments and visualization of value changes.
Structured Data and Presentation
C4E Format: Converting recipes to the format used on Cooking For Engineers.
Process Visualization: Displaying the entire recipe process using Gantt charts or a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) / graphviz to illustrate dependencies between steps.
SEO/Integration: Incorporating JSON-LD support for better recipe recognition and advanced features.
Printability: Generating dedicated print-friendly pages.
Standard Layout: A simplified, standardized layout for better readability across all recipes.
Sharing: A feature for sharing recipe "image cards" (screenshots) with friends.
Management, Search, and Tools
Shopping List: Creating a grocery list from the scraped ingredients.
List Filtering: The ability to exclude common ingredients (salt, pepper, olive oil) from the automatically generated shopping list.
Nutrition: Generating automatic nutrition labels.
Personal Database: The capability to ingest every recipe from every cookbook into a personal, searchable database.
Search Function: Allowing search for recipes instead of just requiring a URL input.
Sync/Backup: Enabling server-sync and export/import of recipes.
Timers: The option to set a timer linked to the time specified in a recipe step.
Custom Lists: Allowing users to create their own categorization rules for ingredients on shopping lists.
Platform and UI
Dark Mode: Adding a dark mode for late-night cooking.
iOS Integration: Implementing a Safari extension feature for the iOS app to open recipe pages automatically within the app.
Video Parsing: The capability to parse recipes from YouTube URLs or videos.I am fixing many such issues right now. Should be at par with the mobile apps soon.
Seriously. I also feel like you're owed an apology for having had to write this in the first place.
I'm coming at "figuring out the Kitchen" for what is almost the first time in my life in I-wish-I-were-in-my-mid-40s[0] and I'm thinking "The Internet in the Early 00s was pretty good for that." And then I fire up a browser on desktop while making a grocery list and once you filter for "things that are obviously AI Hallucinations representing partial recipes", I'm met with one or all of the following: (1) Pages and pages and pages of obviously made-up nonsense anecdotes about the discovery of this magical, uh, air fryer grilled chicken marinade, (2) a pretty haphazard set of instructions that don't bother to include ingredients separated with pleasant units and conversions, but hide them throughout with quantities like "a few tomatoes" here, "an onion" there, (3) which doesn't seem to impact the 4.8 stars after hundreds of "user ratings.". (4) And rather than help these miserable imprecise, ingredient-less recipes with pictures of what "until moist and brown" might appear, you're going to show me a bunch of chopped ingredients in separated bowls that I don't have and then a picture of it finished, delicately decorated in whatever-or-another sauce, and "HEY, here's some lady who's cooking something unrelated to the recipe in this neat little video window I popped up for you! Let's watch the top of her head and this bowl of something on mute for a little while!"
Good God, man, it's like they've optimized the design to break people with ADHD. Some sites were so bad, it felt like "the actual recipe I was looking for" was obfuscated on the page like sketchy sites will hide the "actual Download button" somewhere unexpected and give you a big green "Download" button that leads to revenue. And that's not even getting into the weird bad on some of these AI-churn sites. I end up opening a notepad on the side and refactoring the things that seem like they might work from time to time, but I popped a few recipes in there, including a Chili recipe that "barely had any problems other than layout and annoying cooking lady videos" and just turned it into the perfect representation of that recipe.
I don't know what the original feedback was, but beyond how clear and organized laid out the recipe, here's what I saw as really useful little touches (I'm half wondering if some were even intended): (1) Besides my affinity for circled numbers, I lose my spot when referring to recipes so I like to print out the ones I really like, laminate them, and mark 'em up with the whiteboard markers I have for fridge notes as I go, you gave me a wonderful spot for that -- I'm so prone to re-read/second-guess where I'm at when I need to "put a bunch of things together at the last moment", that was the first thing I noticed, (2) Your highlighting did the same thing for making my grocery list (I DoorDashed it, today) -- it's so much more readable and "easy to find my spot" the way it appears on my desktop compared to any other site, (3) Because of your choice positioning, I can scroll down slightly and see the ingredients and all of the instructions without having to touch this thing, again, while I'm cooking if I use the tablet in the kitchen.
Oh, and thank you for making it just work in the browser. I hate using my phone for this kind of thing and I'm not even crazy about using my tablet for it.
[0] The backstory being unexpected, but very much desired, custody change led to me cooking for my children all of the time, including one who struggles with weight. I was blessed without that struggle, I eat "whatever" atrociously (not picky), and about what I burn, I'm under-weight and my blood work is perfect. One of my kids is identical, just not the one that sounds exactly like me :).