Recipe Puppy, a new Recipe Search Engine

April 21, 2009 4:17 PM

Recipe Puppy, a new Recipe Search Engine [via mefi projects] A recipe search engine that lets you search for recipes by ingredients. Simply put in the ingredients you have and the type of food you want, and the search engine will return the recipes you are closest to being able to make. You can also specify ingredients you don't have, and ingredients that absolutely must be included in the recipe.

"For example, when doing a search for salsa, I can specify that I have cilantro, tomatillos, lime juice, and jalapeños, but I am out of garlic. It returns the recipes that I am closest to making with those ingredients. I then can specify that I must use the tomatillos, because I want a Salsa Verde. Here is this search"

posted by yuletide (41 comments total)

This will be the best invention ever on those late Sunday nights when I have 5 random things in my kitchen and need to wring ~1000 calories from them without vomiting.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 4:18 PM on April 21, 2009 [2 favorites]

Puppy Recipe, you say?
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 4:23 PM on April 21, 2009 [1 favorite]

This solves my indecisiveness but not my laziness.
posted by desjardins at 4:31 PM on April 21, 2009 [5 favorites]

I've been doing this for years with Google.
posted by BrotherCaine at 4:36 PM on April 21, 2009 [1 favorite]

There was a Mefi project that did this years ago. The BBC recipe site also does it.
posted by fire&wings at 4:43 PM on April 21, 2009 [1 favorite]

When I put "puppy" into this database it is just a big fail. How about some hush puppies with real puppy in them?
posted by caddis at 4:44 PM on April 21, 2009 [2 favorites]

I tried it out. It led me to a recipe for 'vegetarian beef and potato casserole'.

Ummmm.... wtf?
posted by pompomtom at 4:47 PM on April 21, 2009 [2 favorites]

I tried out your link. It led me to the top of this post.

Ummmm.... wtf?
posted by gman at 4:54 PM on April 21, 2009 [2 favorites]

I searched for sausage and cauliflower and found Bloemkool Met Versche Wurst - Cauliflower With Sausage. You can't get fairer than that.
posted by paduasoy at 4:57 PM on April 21, 2009 [1 favorite]

Oh but this takes all the fun out of turning cold french fries, Fruit Loops, and a chicken wing into a 3am adventure.
posted by The Whelk at 4:57 PM on April 21, 2009 [3 favorites]

Not to make less of this site, but here are some other recipe searchers: fancy Google API, simple Google API, and a really basic Google API search.
posted by filthy light thief at 5:07 PM on April 21, 2009 [4 favorites]

I have a chunk of manchego cheese and a pomegranate. A straight google search gave me a couple salad recipes, a pomegranate-stuffed chicken, turkey roulades with manchego cheese, pomegranate butter, and sage, and Insalata di Rughetta con Pollo, a perfectly well-balanced combination of Arugula, pomegranate, manchego cheese and chicken paillard.

BBC had nothing with the two together.

Puppy didn't even have recipes for either ingredient individually.

Google wins. Again. Sigh.
posted by kanewai at 5:09 PM on April 21, 2009 [1 favorite]

Dyslexic people are going to be HORRIFIED.
posted by drjimmy11 at 5:17 PM on April 21, 2009 [1 favorite]

Twecipe is another cute one (and Irish, so I'm biased).
posted by jamesonandwater at 5:24 PM on April 21, 2009 [1 favorite]

Sorry Recipe Puppy couldn't understand the ingredient 'tears', searching as a keyword instead
Sorry Recipe Puppy couldn't understand the ingredient 'bloated corpse', searching as a keyword instead
Sorry Recipe Puppy couldn't understand the ingredient 'regret', searching as a keyword instead
posted by blue_beetle at 5:25 PM on April 21, 2009 [5 favorites]

So our major criticism is that the largest and most popular search company in the world does a better job than a home-rolled app made by a member here?

Remind me never to post anything I do to projects.
posted by middleclasstool at 5:47 PM on April 21, 2009 [3 favorites]

Recipe Puppy? Really?

This is the first thing that comes to mind.
posted by porn in the woods at 6:00 PM on April 21, 2009 [1 favorite]

but this takes all the fun out of turning cold french fries, Fruit Loops, and a chicken wing into a 3am adventure.

EXACTLY.

I doubt that the site would have known what to make of "cheese, a single potato, and a box of veggie-burger seasoning", but an old roommate turned those three ingredients into some awesome potato-cheese crouquette things, and impressed the bejebus out of me.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:01 PM on April 21, 2009 [1 favorite]

Hello! Thanks for all your comments positive and not. Its great to get so much feedback. I am constantly adding more recipes(500k and growing), adding more types of ingredients(like manchego cheese and tears), and fixing some existing issues that came about today. If you check back in the coming months this search will only be getting better.
posted by kbrower3 at 6:06 PM on April 21, 2009 [2 favorites]

Not sure how the mechanism works (and I missed that this was an amateur project), but if you're looking for feedback ... find a way to search through the amateur cooking sites!

For me, sites like recipezaar and allcooks and allrecipes rarely show me anything inspiring - and yet they are the first to pop up in any web search.

There are lots of homecooks out there who keep specialty blogs (e.g. Turkish food has, Binnur's Turkish Cookbook and Almost Turkish; and there are others for lovers of Indian or Tuscan or Sicilian cuisine, etc.). A recipe search engine that searched through sites like these would be phenomenal ... though I have no idea how you'd work it!
posted by kanewai at 6:17 PM on April 21, 2009 [3 favorites]

I searched for:

Artichoke hearts, Worcestershire sauce, mushrooms and shrimp. I got back some really quite interesting recipes, some crappy ones and one I intend to make and maybe tonight. Yeah, it's a casserole but, with a light touch on the fats it should be good.
posted by bz at 6:20 PM on April 21, 2009 [1 favorite]

adding more types of ingredients(like manchego cheese and tears)

Unicorn is in there so I'm happy.
posted by ryoshu at 7:08 PM on April 21, 2009

There's also Cookin' with Google.

This recipe with manchego cheese and pomegranate included in the ingredient list was the first result I got when I did a simple search with "manchego" and "pomegranate."
posted by jonp72 at 8:04 PM on April 21, 2009

Remind me never to post anything I do to projects.

This is a great project, I'm just not sure it's FPP worthy yet. That reflects on yuletide, not kbrower3. What would make this kick Google's ass is if you could search recipes based on ingredient quantities and get back a result that would feed a certain number of people. Also, Google does returns quite a few false positives from pages with more than one recipe on them.
posted by BrotherCaine at 8:05 PM on April 21, 2009

Also, aliasing substitute ingredients in the search could make this more powerful, but would be tricky to implement.
posted by BrotherCaine at 8:07 PM on April 21, 2009

Bachelor Bolognaise (serves 2)

Ingredients
~500g frozen block of mince beef
~500g pasta sauce, red, whatever is on special
~500g pasta, any shape, it all tastes the same anyway
water
salt shaker

Materials
2 large saucepans
1 strainer
2 spoons

Procedure
Set pasta to boil in saucepan 1 on high heat, with about a spoonful of salt in the water. Set timer for 10 minutes. Put the mince in saucepan 2 on medium heat. Stir the mince and keep flipping it over. Scrape the softened, grayish meat from the block each time you do so. Continue this until all mince is soft and gray-brown. If this takes substantially less time than the pasta, put it onto lower heat. When the pasta looks like boiling over, turn it down to medium/low heat/ When the pasta is nearly done, pour the sauce into the meat in saucepan 2 and stir. When the pasta is done, take saucepan 1 (pasta) off the heat, pour it through the strainer and tip it from the strainer into the meat and sauce. Wash strainer under hot water, leave to drip-dry. Prepare about a half-inch depth of cold water in the sink. Stir. When heated thoroughly, pour half into saucepan 1. Put saucepan 1 into the sink to cool. Hand with spoon to flatmate. Put saucepan 2 into the sink to cool. Take spoon, add salt to taste, and eat it. Inform flatmate that as he did not cook, it is his turn to do the dishes.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 8:23 PM on April 21, 2009 [1 favorite]

Shazam! I dig it! I like not getting every freaking result in the world back. Google is overkill sometimes - too much information. I like this little app very much and will continue to use it.
What pulls it close to my heart though, is the "puppy" part - that sealed it right there.
posted by PuppyCat at 8:29 PM on April 21, 2009

And one more thing: I have no problem with this post/project - how else are you going to reliably field test something like this? Leave it to Mefites to point out issues, flaws, features, moral shortcomings, you name it, ad infinitum. Family and friends are too gentle. You gotta throw stuff out to the wolves in here to see if it survives.
posted by PuppyCat at 8:34 PM on April 21, 2009

Why does a search for "pork" result in a search for "pork chops"? There's a lot more to a pig than pork chops and bacon.
posted by sanko at 9:27 PM on April 21, 2009

I doubt that the site would have known what to make of "cheese, a single potato, and a box of veggie-burger seasoning", but an old roommate turned those three ingredients into some awesome potato-cheese crouquette things, and impressed the bejebus out of me.

I remember the exact look of surprise, joy, and revelation when I showed by younger brother how to make a taylor ham sandwich at midnight when mom had passed out on the couch and you wanted to stay up watching Comedy Central cause we just tapped into the neighbor's cable line. It was an intensely New Jersey kinda moment.

I think that was the night I introduced him to MST3K. His first episode was The Leech Woman. Mine? The Projected Man. This is like a murderous episode of "Lucy".
Typical British reaction, throw dynamite at the problem. Your Kitten checks are adorable! June is busting out all over! I love to go to Bar and have Drink. She enters a room before she does. It's the 50s! why am I am taking orders from a woman? Jane Jetson ..after the Divorce. Okay I'll stop now.
posted by The Whelk at 9:31 PM on April 21, 2009

Texas Deer Chili

Not bad at all.
posted by Smedleyman at 10:17 PM on April 21, 2009

101 Ways to Take your Puppy for a Wok
posted by Rumple at 10:24 PM on April 21, 2009

These lovely self links spring to mind.

Seriously, zilch on dog as an ingredient. If I was a dog eating Filipino or Indonesian, I'd feel that my cuisine was being sidelined by this rather cute and anthropomorphic search engine. Growl.
posted by rhymer at 12:13 AM on April 22, 2009

Pretty sure epicurious does this too.
posted by Tacodog at 12:13 AM on April 22, 2009

Ah, I take that back. Epicurious doesn't have the "I absolutely must have ingredient X" and those other search options.
posted by Tacodog at 1:00 AM on April 22, 2009

A bit US centric; aubergine (egg plant) changes to gin, courgettes (zuucchini) gives zero,
posted by fatfrank at 3:43 AM on April 22, 2009

porn in the woods summed up my feelings: Where's the recipe for cooking stray, and sometimes hot, dogs?
Puppies look oh so tasty... I am mad at this post for making me want some puppy chow.
Om nom puppy nom nom.
posted by hypersloth at 5:00 AM on April 22, 2009

Bookmarked it. This is right up my alley. Suggestion: is it possible to specify method of cooking? Right now I'm interested in stove top recipes because my oven is not working.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 5:59 AM on April 22, 2009

Hot dogs, spaghetti (via bb)
posted by carter at 8:24 AM on April 22, 2009

Pretty cool. Just wish there were more reviews.
posted by OrientalRugs at 3:43 PM on April 22, 2009

I used Recipe Puppy and he immediately led me to this site.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 4:31 PM on April 22, 2009