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Hi EYB,

I was looking through OTK's Extra Good Things for veggie recipes and noticed that several recipes are vegetarian (or vegan) save for one ingredient, chicken stock. In the book, they all specify chicken OR vegetable stock in the ingredients list, so it's not that the chicken stock is integral to the dish. In these cases, would it be possible to categorize the recipes as vegetarian/vegan regardless so that they come up even when I'm filtering by dietary requirement? I noticed this was already the case for one of the recipes, the Green Minestrone (indexed as vegetarian but with chicken stock in the ingredients).

Would be a shame to miss out on these recipes when filtering, when just one easy swap is required and is already in the ingredient list.

Thanks!

PS, I think the Black lime focaccia recipe should be indexed as vegan as I don't see any animal products in the ingredients?

I agree!  I've done a fair bit of member indexing and I've indexed a lot of recipes that only contain one or a few animal-product related ingredient such as lard, honey, dairy or meat/fish stocks, but are otherwise vegan and/or vegetarian.  When the recipe itself suggests vegan or vegetarian substitutions for the animal-product ingredient(s), I have wished that there was a way of reflecting vegan and/or vegetarian nutrition types for the recipe. This is because I'm a vegetarian myself, and it would be great to be able to have these recipes included in my filtered search results.  

Perhaps if the recipe author themself has suggested substitutions that would make the recipe fit into a nutrition category, then vegan, vegetarian (or gluten-free etc.) could be added in these cases?  Or new nutrition types could be added for "substitute ingredient vegan", "substitute ingredient vegetarian", "substitute ingredient gluten-free".... etc.  

I agree it would be very useful, but I think it will be cumbersome to implement for EYB and add quite a bit of complexity to indexing (which is very simple already... LOL :) : what is a substitution ingredient, where do you draw the line? Also, that would only be available for recipes going forward, how do you go about the existing gigantic stock of recipes?

Maybe EYB or the developers could come up with an easy way to implement it (for example categorising the ingredients, in which case you could search for vegetarian ingredients + chicken stock or whatever), or I don't know..

Or maybe use labels/bookmarks to say the same thing e.g. "substitute ingredient vegetarian"/vegan/etc.? (I know it may be cumbersome to assign them but just as much to index no?)

I agree that it would be overly complex to consider all the variations. I indexed One Part Plant by Jessica Murnane. About 25% of the recipes contain honey, and she consistently suggests substituting maple syrup for vegans. The remaining recipes are vegan.

Maybe one potential  solution to this would be to amend the indexing manuals to show something like "if a recipe is predominantly vegetarian/vegan, except for a specified stock, index "stock of your choice".. . Same could be done for honey.. "index sweetener of your chocie"... of course, that may considerably alter the flavour profile of the finished dish, so may not meet with an author's approval! It would also save the need to add a substitution note! And would also seem to be almost "in accord" with the current manual note: 

• Other possible non-Vegetarian and non-Vegan ingredients:  Recipes can call for many other  processed ingredients that may or may not contain "hidden" animal-derived products, e.g., margarine may contain trace amounts of dairy; prepared pie crusts may contain lard; red candies may contain carmine (from crushed insects); beers and wines may contain or employ animal products such as isinglass (fish bladders) or gelatin; seemingly "dairy-free" and "egg-free" cookies, crackers, and other baked goods may contain whey, lactose, or albumin (from egg whites); etc. As long as there are no clearly animal-derived ingredients called for, it is acceptable to index recipes calling for possibly taboo ingredients as Vegetarian and Vegan on the assumption that vegetarians and vegans will check product ingredients and substitute an acceptable product where necessary.

I've not specifically found it a problem with indexing, as I seldom search for vegetarian or vegan recipes as such but I have noticed the chef's addiction to to chicken stock creeping in to many reipes I would expect to be vegetarian or vegan

For example I have seen recipes for Indian dals, wriitten by British and American chefs that use chicken stock where I am pretty sure an Indian chef, or home cook, would use water, it's a problem that runs wider and deeper than just the index issue, and it really annoys me.   There are also many soup recipes where the chicken stock seems to have no reason other than to make the dish non-vegetarian. 

I like the idea of "stock of choice" because I for one basically make my own choice anyways based on fridge/freezer/pantry contents.  If chicken (or beef etc) stock is the ONLY ingredient that takes the dish out of  vegetarian and / or vegan it is now appropriate to index the recipe using those categories.  I don't search using those filters BUT if I search for "vegetable soup" I'll get that recipe AND can clearly make my own choice AND the person searching for vegetarian / vegan will get the same recipe/choice.  

I have clarified in the Indexing manual and to our Pro indexers that where an optional ingredient would make a recipe Vegetarian or Vegan then an "of your choice" ingredient should be selected.

Thanks so much Jane, and to Alice for getting the ball rolling!

That's great, thanks Jane and all who replied with ideas :)

It's not as "exciting" as you wanted Alicevegan - only when the author lists the ingredients as "optional" or specifically comments that it can be made vegan/vegetarian that the  nutrition tag will be applied.. so for example, chicken stock will NOT be replaced by stock of your choice in ALL instances .. ONLY if author states that as an option - so we're half way there!