Mix how?
Well
This example is imperfect because you also need to mix the dry ingredients together before the folding in. I know that but it looks like this chart assumes everyone knows it. But the idea is sound. I like it.
…and this table would still work, since you could write this in that empty square at the bottom!
Im mgl, I actually cant decipher op super easily
If you are tired of reading of grandma’s hardships in the great depression here is a trick:
Add “cooked.wiki/” (without the “”) to the beginning of any recipe URL, and it will strip away everything but a column with the ingredients and a column with the recipe.
You have to make an account to store recipes, but that’s totally optional.
Someone mentioned an app for this, there’s also one called Paprika 3 that does something similar. This one you don’t need an account to store recipes though. It can also translate weight to imperial measurements, and solve ingredient quantities for portions like 1/2, etc.
Also generally you can hit the in-page “print” button and the print version is often a one-sheet that cuts out the “my family xyz” bs. To be fair, some of those have real tips or hints or substitutions they don’t include in the recipe proper, but a lot of the time it’s just fluff as you can’t copyright recipes without significant extra steps and exposition.
For Android there’s also this: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.flauschcode.broccoli/
Does the same on your phone just share a link to the app.
I’ve never seen much about f-droid. Is some sort of framework/launcher?
F-droid is an alternative to the Google App Store, but upcoming changes by Google will prevent all third party stores from working on standard Android phones.
Is there a way of calling on the mods to pin this, cause that’s useful as hell
Oh great. Now I want to lay out all my own recipes like this.
… I have too many projects already. XD
The guy is pursuing a patent for it, so I’m not sure other people can use it XD
Here’s an open source library for generating these from markdown https://mossblaser.github.io/recipe_grid/tutorial.html
Annoying that they did not even mention the original site: https://www.cookingforengineers.com/
Which does seem down right now, so archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20260729050049/https://www.cookingforengineers.com/
The site being down fits with the ‘for engineers’ theme
Joking aside, it was down because it got Reddit hugged to death, since a post on the frontpage of /r/all mentioned it in the top comment.
Now it’s back online
Just because we can’t code for shit and insist on doing everything ourselves…
Damn, even that site has a life story before a recipe
Very cool tho
If you put a recipe on your webpage Google will ignore that shit. Butter and eggs? So few words, many numbers. Boring.
So you have to add a narrative if you want search engines to pay any attention, or even count the page as content.
Google could just fix this, but no, we’ve all adjusted to it.
I had no idea it was about too few words. I always thought it was that they add all that fluff to maximize their advertising revenue, making you scroll and scroll through a story before you find the recipe. Seems like either way, it’s thanks to Google….
Maybe originally a couple decades ago, but every food blog template added a “jump to recipe” button pretty shortly after those started to be a thing.
Interestingly, not the whole site is down, but the homepage is
I found the recipe but apparently the design in the OP wasn’t perfect, they have slightly updated it: https://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/327/Espresso-Brownies
This guy was the foundation of my cooking skills… 20 years ago. Damn.
But where am I going to put the six paragraph AI generated anecdote about my grandmother?
In white text on white background at the bottom of the page where the rest of the SEO goes.
You know, I don’t hate this.
Let’s simplify websites significantly. Everything SEO/AI slop appears below the fold in white text.
The point of the AI slop / random pointless exposition is to maximize the number of ads a user has to scroll past to see the actual recipe. What incentive would a website have to put that at the bottom?
Or its because it was a family recipe passed down and making the recipe reminds you of all the special times you spent with family and want to share the origins of that family tradition, rather than just sharing your grandma’s secret recipe.
It started as a SEO thing where websites with longer texts got a better indexing on Google, thus more ad revenue.
Then put it at the top,
ya big fool
“And Nanny only used Hershey cocoa powder. Click my Amazon link to buy it from my shop!”
Ah yes, recipes for people who think “what do you mean you can’t cook, the recipe is right there.”
Usually because they’ve never examined why people don’t rave about their pie crusts or cake texture.
I mean yeah but most recepies don’t have proper instructions on how to sift flour or measure wet vs dry ingredients in them either. I know how to do it and I appreciate the conciseness of this view.
Where’s the box for the story about how mother used to make this years ago and how the author made it for a such and such party and guests were asking for the recipe and …
I want to read the authors complete backstory and several holiday pictures and sales pitches on why I should buy their artisanal ingredients, scrolling until I nearly give up.
I feel like the recipe loses authenticity since there is no backstory about how their great uncle came up with the recipe after falling out of a guard tower during WWII.
“When I was eight my great uncle Pete introduced me to his Schweddy balls…”
I actually vibe coded a script that would jump your browser to the recipe for that exact purpose.
That sounds cool and all, but can you vibe code a script that injects more heart tugging stories and additional AI images before I get to the recipe? It should feel like Im wading through slop to find what I’m looking for.
justtherecipe.com is pretty great for cutting out that crap, although not as efficient as the system in OP pic
I don’t know, what’s a recipe without a popup video and six banners and a “jump to recipe” button that doesn’t work, as well as 99 pictures of spaghetti?
This recipe is missing something. Maybe throw in a backstory.
Eggs from gay chickens and vanilla from gender-fluid vanilla plants.
Vanilla orchids are not gender fluid at all, they are hermaphroditic. And eggs from happy hens just taste better.
COOKING FOR ENGINEERS!!!
I learned how to cook from this site like 20 years ago! I still use that format on my home recipe cards sometimes, but now I’ve just gotten so used to it all recipes look like this on my head. Great format, taters guna tate.
The real site also includes a paragraph description, this is just a quick reference card that’s assuming you have already cooked the recipe a few times, not great for learning it the first time.
Because normal people are idiots. They are not going to understand any of this whatsoever. That’s why you have to put the actual instructions with the ingredients.
I believe this design breaks down once you prepare an ingredient that then gets split for use in two or more later steps.
But now I’m thinking which kind of diagram could be used as well. Some adaption of an UML activity diagram maybe?
List it twice?
No.
Or if any of the steps requires a more complicated instruction that can’t be expressed in a few words. It wouldn’t break the structure of the diagram, but it wouldn’t be as beautiful.
It is a fun idea though, maybe there is another format that works.
This diagram is classic “engineer developing a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist in a domain they don’t understand”
The diagram does have benefits. For example it shows which steps can be performed in parallel if multiple people are cooking.
And concise! No more frantic scrolling on my phone with batter-covered fingers
I don’t need a diagram to do that but maybe my experience is atypical
Similarly, it also easily identifies which part of the recipe each ingredient goes to. You can do this by splitting up the ingredients list as well, but that doesn’t really go against it being a good idea.
I’m a software “engineer” and also passionate about cooking. Both are arts. You can’t reduce it to an algorithm
Create a separate card for that ingredient, and in the main card list “add X% of <other card>”
I like that idea, if only for the fact that it opens the door to recursive recipes.
Sounds like we’re close to inventing sourdough from first principles
A pie with itself?
I ran into this exact issue when I was making these diagrams for my own recipes: https://git.tilde.town/gamerdonkey/recipes_for_engineers#known-issues . My workaround was just to have instructions to set some aside and use it later.
I find this layout works best for in-the-moment reference while cooking, and the 2-dimensional nature of it is what really makes it useful. So I think of splitting an ingredient as like lifting some of it out into an imaginary third dimension before inserting it later at another step.
I’ve never seen a 3-dimensional recipe (ink in a cookbook notwithstanding), aren’t they all 2-dimensional?
I suppose you could show a split. Doesn’t cascade anymore but flow still works.
Can’t an ingredient be there twice?
But you want to do the first phase together
Then two tables? Or rows in the middle to mark the action to split the ingredient in 2?
rows in the middle to mark the action to split sounds the best to me
The hallmark of recipe design imo was modernist cuisine and the following books on pizza and bread. A lot of the recipes were obnoxious and it’s written by a notorious ex Microsoft cto that turned into a patent troll to finance his cooking nerd bullshit (morally justifiable to pirate all of the obnoxiously expensive books) but props for their recipe format
Very clear, in order of addition, scaling percentages, and in the actual book clear instructions follow which is extremely helpful in the bread one especially
I have Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and I believe its written in the same way…
okay it is a little different, because there is no % or weight measurements, but it is in order similar, with similar instruction style, printed 1970.
Either I cant calculate or the percentages don’t add up.
What is up with the two 100%?I had the same question and found the answer: https://modernistcuisine.com/mc/how-to-scale-a-recipe/
Would’ve probably been helpful to add that, whoops. But once you understand it it makes scaling a recipe much easier. This is less important for stuff like Mac and cheese tbf, but if you go to the bread or pizza book the ratios are much more important
That recipe design reminds me I should learn LaTeX, but I am also lazy, so…
