7 Comments

• Erica  on  3/28/2010 at 3:34 PM

  I am so glad you are adding new "recipe types". Here are some very important ones that I would like to see: Beef Dishes Pork Dishes Poultry Dishes Seafood Dishes (In fact, I didn't see ANY specific meats at all in the "recipe types". So there hasn't been a place for recipes like, Beef Pot Roast, Chicken Piccata, Pork Chops, etc.) Also, the only appetizer-type of recipe listed is "Dips, Spreads, and Salsas". I think it is important to add: canapes/ hors d'oeuvres snacks

• Eurydice  on  3/28/2010 at 10:27 PM

  One of the major reasons that I prefer EYB to other recipe indexing systems is that it is relatively well disciplined as to the use of descriptors. I see beef, pork etc as ingredients rather than recipe types, and I like the way they are handled by the ingredient type facility in 'advanced search', but then I was happy with 'pasta' as an ingredient too. I prefer the Recipe types to reflect just the major cooking styles, and not to become too detailed and unwieldy.

• Carole  on  3/28/2010 at 11:18 PM

  Here is where I've had difficulty in my searches: if I am looking for a vegetable side dish, but not a salad, as for example grilled asparagus, then I can enter "Side Dish" under Course in the Advanced Search section, but then I still have to wade through scores of salad recipes that have asparagus in them. So I'd like to see Vegetable Side Dish or something similar as a Recipe Type. Up to this point what I've been doing is putting in vinegar or lettuce as a non-ingredient. But that still lets in lots of salads! Perhaps I'm missing some simple way to achieve the same end.

• Eurydice  on  3/29/2010 at 3:06 AM

  Well the data is already there without a new recipe type. Could we deselect for "salads'?

• Jane  on  3/29/2010 at 9:03 AM

  Thanks for all your feedback. Erica - all the searches you want are available through Advanced search. To find a meat type, select 'beef - all' or 'chicken - all' etc in Ingredient type. To find Canapés & hors d'oeuvres or Snacks select those in Meal/course. Quick search should just be used if you know the recipe name you want or just want to look for one ingredient (bearing in mind that the search will find everywhere that word appears e.g. a search on chicken will show recipes with chicken stock). Advanced search is much more precise as you are searching within each specific field rather than the entire database. Eurydice - I do agree with you on keeping the distinction between ingredients and recipe types. The reason we felt we needed to add the pasta dishes in Recipe type is there are so many pasta & noodles recipes that just searching with that ingredient would produce unwieldy results (I have 2,258 pasta recipes on My Bookshelf). We felt splitting them into 3 categories would help searches. We have Egg dishes and Rice dishes (the only other ingredients in Recipe type) as those ingredients are frequently used in recipes in which they are not the primary ingredient. We aren't planning on adding any other ingredients to Recipe type. Carole/Eurydice - we are currently revamping the search process and the ability to unselect recipe types sounds like something we should add.

• Erica  on  3/30/2010 at 8:43 PM

  I do understand what you guys mean about distinguishing "ingredient" from "recipe type"-- so thanks a bunch for reminding me about the ingredient search in the advanced-search format. However, Jane, I do still have a question. Shouldn't every recipe have a "recipe type" that matches it? For instance, Chicken Picatta, like I mentioned in my previous blog, wouldn't fit into any of the "recipe types" that you have (at least any that I could see). The same would be true for a roast or meatloaf recipe. Or did you not design it that way (to have a "recipe type" for every recipe)? Thanks so much for your time in answering these blogs... it really helps us (new users) to figure out the indexing methods.

• Jane  on  3/31/2010 at 9:23 AM

  Every recipe isn't going to fit easily into a Recipe type. Though a category I wish we had added from the start is cooking methods - roasting, steaming, frying, poaching, etc. If we do add that now the issue is going to be all the quarter of a million recipes already indexed. Many recipes will be obvious from the name what cooking method is used, but not always. And at this stage in our development we can't go back over 1,000 cookbooks and check every recipe. However we do plan in the future to open up the data so members can edit information - maybe cooking method is something members would be happy to add?

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