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#1 Posted : Sunday, November 13, 2011 11:42:38 PM(UTC)

Hi all,


 


I've been a member of the site for several months now, and am increasingly seeing 'store-supboard ingredients' come up as an ingredient in recipes, such as: http://www.eatyourbooks....pes/247513/leche-quemada


What are 'store-cupboard ingredients', exactly? Everyone has different things in their pantry so the label 'store-cupboard ingredients' is useless. When I later went to check the recipe it called for salt, sugar, etc which I can understand might fit this label, but I don't know why the indexer hasn't listed them.


The reality is, labels like 'store-cupboard ingredients' diminish the value of a site like EYB since they leave ingredients unlisted and mean you still need to consult the book before checking you have all the ingredients you might need, so it hurts looking up things on the fly. I really hope this label is just not being used out of laziness.

#2 Posted : Monday, November 14, 2011 12:08:08 AM(UTC)

I responded to your other post on store-cupboard ingredients but I would just say, take a look at Help, About Recipes Some recipes include "store-cupboard ingredients" - what does this mean? which specifies which ingredients we consider store-cupboard.


I can assure you that laziness is never a motivation at EYB. Fiona, Deborah (our Data Manager) and I each work between 12-15 hours a day, 7 days a week to create and build this website.  I haven't actually had a single day in the last 4 years that I haven't worked.  I'm not complaining as I love what we are doing, just hoping you will understand that our motivation is always to create the best site we can with the time and resources we have available.

#3 Posted : Monday, November 14, 2011 12:38:13 PM(UTC)

JCtomas -you are correct that everyone has different staples in their pantry! But I believe that EYB as recognized correctly that a line must be drawn somewhere to identify the most important ingredients in a recipe.


Jane is correct - that the information available on this website (including the table of store-cupboard ingredients) will help to clarify what is meant by the "store-cupboard" description. It also explains that certain items are never indexed - salt, baking powder, etc. Other items are sometimes not indexed if the quantity is small but are listed if a larger amount is called for - for example, a tablespoon of flour in a sauce would not be listed, but three cups in a bread recipe would be shown. The ingredient "Store-cupboard ingredients" itself is not supposed to be used unless the aggregate quantity in the recipe is significant.


One of the most important things to remember is the list of ingredients is what powers the search engine. You can't search or include/exlude on store-cupboard ingredients .. nor would you be likely to want to do so.


I have found in the indexing that I've done that the "store-cupboard" designation tends to be most often used in baked goods and occasionally in dressings. Otherwise, any store-cupboard ingredients called for are so small in relation to the recipe as a whole that the designation isn't often used.

#4 Posted : Tuesday, November 15, 2011 7:45:37 PM(UTC)

Hi Jane and Vanessa,


Thanks for getting back to me to clarify this! I can understand why EYB wouldn't want to clutter its results with the very small quantities of water, salt, flour, sugar etc through using the label 'store-cupboard ingredients', but I still do think this damages the quality of the data here since this effectively means not all ingredients are revealed in a recipe.


Having worked in the online space for nearly a decade now, I'm surprised your engineers haven't considered a technical solution to not count small quantities of common ingredients in Search results - they could have, for instance, set up the ingredients covered by 'store-cupboard ingredients' as a checkbox in the CMS, to quarantine that data from the main ingredients but still capture their use in a recipe. The hardest part of all of this I imagine is capturing initial ingredient data, so I find it hard to not see the use of labels like 'store-cupboard ingredients' as diminishing the quality of this data from the outset.


That said, I really do find EYB useful. I really don't know how I used to get by without it!


- Carlo

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