Surprisingly irritating! - Recipes & Cooking Advice - Eat Your Books

Forum

Welcome Guest! You can not login or register.

Notification

Icon
Error

Surprisingly irritating!   Go to last post Go to last unread
#1 Posted : Monday, May 28, 2018 12:32:03 PM(UTC)
One of the things I find most useful about his site is that I can input an ingredient that needs using up and it’ll throw back some interesting recipes to use it up.

This morning I remembered whilst at the supermarket that I had half a fillet of un-dyed smoked haddock. EYB threw up (interesting term in this context!) a recipe from Diana Henry’s Plenty. Parsnips with smoked haddock soup.... perfect! So checking the ingredients I needed to buy some parsnips.

This evening I got the book to see the recipe instructions. The ingredients list showed “double cream” Eh? Obviously triple checked the EYB version and there’s no mention of double cream.

Luckily, I have some BUT this isn’t the first time that I’ve found ingredients missing from EYB listed ingredients. It really devalues the worth of this site if you can’t trust the information it’s providing.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Also it would be nice to know if the herbs in recipes were fresh or dried.
#2 Posted : Monday, May 28, 2018 1:27:31 PM(UTC)

In this case it looks like it is not listed because the recipe calls for either milk or cream, in which case EYB indexes the ingredient listed first, which was milk. However, EYB considers milk to be a store cupboard ingredient , and those are omitted from the indexed ingredients, so nothing appears at all. Personally, I don't find the unlisted storecupboard ingredients to be a problem because I always check the recipe before shopping anyway, to find out how much of each ingredient I need. However, this did remind me of a feature I would love to see- a more interactive shopping list feature. I would love to be able to remove individual ingredients that I already have, and manually add unlisted ingredients that I know I need. Then I would need no other shopping app or paper list.

#3 Posted : Monday, May 28, 2018 3:14:34 PM(UTC)

As Yildiz100 said, ‘store cupboard ingredients’ aren’t included in the list of ingredients unless they exceed a certain quantity or are mentioned in the recipe title. The ingredient listing for every recipe does have a note about store cupboard ingredients not being included, but it is very easy not to see it! This is the list of store cupboard ingredients: https://support.eatyourb...pboard-Ingredients-Table


This topic comes up every so often on the forum with people weighing in both for and against listing these items. If I remember correctly the reason these ingredients aren’t included is that EYB indexers are paid by ingredient ... so listing very common ingredients costs a lot more and would reduce the overall number of books able to be indexed.

#4 Posted : Tuesday, May 29, 2018 5:50:08 PM(UTC)

FJT;16647 wrote:
This topic comes up every so often on the forum with people weighing in both for and against listing these items.


I am one who weighs in for listing the "store cupboard" items for two reasons:



  1. As a single, older woman living in the Pacific Northwest, my pantry does not match the assumed list. One could rightly assume that I would have fish sauce, soy sauce, gochujang but I likely don't have Dijon mustard. One can't assume I have both red and white wine or red and white wine vinegar. I will have rice vinegar, black vinegar, malt vinegar. . . Eggs and milk I buy in small quantities and am likely out of them. Confectioner's sugar - never in my pantry unless I know a recipe calls for it.

  2. I have never understood those who write up a shopping list for the week. I do use shopping lists for entertaining and for trying new recipes but my general approach is to go to the market and see what looks to be of the highest quality. Then I start building menus around those products. This means that if I pull up a recipe in the grocery store, I am not near the cookbooks to check for errors or store-cupboard items i.e. I'm in the position of the original poster, Indio32.


For similar reasons, I get annoyed that some items are not detailed - it is "milk" not "whole milk", "2% milk", "nonfat milk". (Consider apples and potatoes which are rarely marked with even the broad categories one needs to select them.) The variety one has on hand or that one purchases looking only at the ingredient list in the grocery store, may not be what works best (or sometimes even works) in the recipe.


However, I do understand the arguments against including them, both the financial argument and the number of items returned in a search. And I want those who hold the view that they should be excluded, to sympathize with the original poster who picks a recipe in the grocery store away from her cookbooks.

#6 Posted : Wednesday, May 30, 2018 12:50:20 PM(UTC)

I certainly sympathise with those who find this frustrating and, given that this seems to be a recurring issue, it is clear that more needs to be done to ensure members don’t get home from the grocery store without all the ingredients they need to make a dish. The store cupboard ingredients list seems to match my pantry quite well so I’ve been lucky not to have been caught out this way. I admit that I wasn’t really aware of the extent of the store cupboard ingredients list at all until I started indexing books.


Please could EYB give some serious consideration to making the note about store cupboard ingredients much clearer on the ingredients list for each recipe? I think this was suggested last time this issue cropped up on the forum. And maybe raise awareness on the blog periodically too?

#5 Posted : Wednesday, May 30, 2018 6:03:57 PM(UTC)

mjes;16649 wrote:
As a single, older woman living in the Pacific Northwest, my pantry does not match the assumed list. One could rightly assume that I would have fish sauce, soy sauce, gochujang but I likely don't have Dijon mustard. One can't assume I have both red and white wine or red and white wine vinegar. I will have rice vinegar, black vinegar, malt vinegar. . . Eggs and milk I buy in small quantities and am likely out of them. Confectioner's sugar - never in my pantry unless I know a recipe calls for it.


This is the one quibble I have with the assumed pantry list as well: it seems quite heavily biased towards Western European/North American cooking styles and cuisines vs. other world cuisines. While I fit that description myself, I largely cook Asian cuisines at home and my pantry is never without fish sauce, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and rice wine, etc....much as you describe. Yet I rarely bake so I generally don't have more than basic granulated sugar on hand, as one example.


But like others brought up, I usually always check a recipe before doing any shopping to make sure I'm not missing any ingredients.

#7 Posted : Friday, June 1, 2018 6:03:29 PM(UTC)

This is too large a change to be implemented, but ideally the web application should have indexed all ingredients and let the individual user define the pantry items they did not wish to see displayed. Then the differences in ethnicity/cuisine would not favor one set of cooks over another.

#8 Posted : Saturday, June 2, 2018 4:32:25 PM(UTC)
Related to this: what I find annoying is why some recipes that refer to other recipes have the ingredients listed for BOTH recipes. For example, the Kimchi Fried Rice recipe in Korea Town has the ingredients for both the fried rice recipe and the kimchi recipe. If I have kimchi, then I don’t need all those other ingredients for the fried rice. It’s misleading to include the kimchi ingredient list as part of the fried rice recipe without making it clear that some are for a (possibly unnecessary) sub recipe. A lot of recipes in Korea Town were indexed this way.
#9 Posted : Saturday, June 2, 2018 7:05:07 PM(UTC)

kitchen_chick, the way this recipe is indexed is exactly what EYB's indexing guidelines call for: whenever a recipe includes other sub-recipes from the same book, all of the ingredients must be listed in the larger recipe. (There are a couple of exceptions, for stocks/broths and for spice/herb blends or rubs, but those are the only sub-recipes for which the indexer can list a collective ingredient rather than the individual sub-recipe ingredients.) So since the Korean fried rice recipe specifies making the book's "Napa cabbage kimchi" as a first option, with store-bought kimchi as a second option, our indexer correctly listed the kimchi sub-recipe ingredients along with the fried rice ingredients. I have added an EYB Note about subbing store-bought kimchi for the book's homemade version, which should make it clearer why the sub-recipe ingredients are listed. As with all indexed recipes, members are expected to consult the recipe in their cookbook before cooking, or in this case they can click on the 'View complete recipe' link to see the recipe online.

#10 Posted : Monday, June 4, 2018 4:59:28 PM(UTC)

Deborah;16658 wrote:
kitchen_chick, the way this recipe is indexed is exactly what EYB's indexing guidelines call for: whenever a recipe includes other sub-recipes from the same book, all of the ingredients must be listed in the larger recipe.


This makes perfect sense. However, it would be helpful to have subrecipes' ingredients were marked as such as one can often exchange them enmass as in a recipe note added to day where the baker omitted the lemon/lime curd of the recipe and used jam. There is a disconnect in philosophy. Many specific items are clumped together assuming the cook can substitute freely - apples, potatoes, flours, name brand items.  But then on ingredients one makes oneself (sub-recipes) one is tied tightly to the recipe, the potential substitutes not being visable. 

#11 Posted : Thursday, October 18, 2018 1:24:11 PM(UTC)

I'm new to this site and am still trying to get all my cookbooks added, but I am finding that, except for the most basic recipes, using the shopping list feature while at the grocery store will not be a useful feature for me. Mostly because there are no quantities, but now I see also because it could be missing ingredients. At least it is helpful to have the list of main ingredients when I am searching for a recipe. I may be more likely to make a dish containing more of the ingredients I already have on hand than one I have fewer ingredients for or that needs specialty ingredients that are hard to find. In this way, the current format will be useful. What I have been doing prior to joining EYB is taking a photo of the ingredient list in my cookbook with my phone, and referring to that when I do the shopping. Although EYB has not eliminated that step, at least it's making it easier to select recipes in the first place.

You cannot post new topics in this forum.
You cannot reply to topics in this forum.
You cannot delete your posts in this forum.
You cannot edit your posts in this forum.
You cannot create polls in this forum.
You cannot vote in polls in this forum.