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I'm trying to figure out whether this website is for me. I have a rather eclectic collection of cookbooks, in various languages. I found some of them in in the database in English, which is great for searching, but not all. Would I want to index books myself, and if so how useful would it be for me to find recipes if I have to search in various languages? Even if those books exist in English mine are in French, Dutch, German, etc... thus I could not index them in something I can search with easily. Also, is there an ingredient search that combines names, like I get recipes with e.g. courgette when I search for zucchini, something that drives me mad when searching through book indexes of English books. Looking for advice.

The ingredient search in recipes does combine terms for British/American/Australian/Canadian English terms. You can test this with eggplants/aubergines or courgettes/zucchini.

EYB currently has about 50 indexed cookbooks in German, 5 in French, and 1 in Dutch. So you might get lucky! Although the book is written in German (for example), the EYB indexer has translated the ingredients into Englsih. The recipe titles are copied from the book -- if the book has the title in German & English, then the EYB recipe title will too. If the book has the recipe title only in German, then the EYB recipe title will reflect that. 

Unfortunately, EYB does not allow one to filter for the book's language. I got my 50 German language books statistic as follows: On the Library/Books page, filter by Country/Europe/Germany & then Country/Europe/Austria. Click on "Indexed books" at the top right of the screen. The 13 Austrian books are all in German; the 46 German books are a mix of English & German language.

I hope this helps!

lkgrover explained well but I would like to clarify that it's not the indexer who added the ingredients in English but our ingredients database is all in English (as are all the recipe categories) so only those can be used. As lkgrover explained, when indexing a book in another language you add the recipe titles exactly as they are in the book. 

And we have multiple linked ingredients so a search by one name will show all results for the linked ingredients too.

Thanks a lot guys, that explains a lot. So if I wanted to have e.g. Bart van Ophen - Koken met Vis uit Blik2 (doesn't exist in English) in the database I'd need to add it myself, and all the ingredients in English instead of Dutch. It does exist on Amazon, thus as a paying member I could at least get the general information. And if I wanted to index some books that are not available in any big online store, or never were then I'd have to start from scratch but could also add them. My aim basically is to be able to search all my cookbooks by ingredients, maybe cuisine and not only those already in the database.

Btw, is there a way to figure out whether a recipe in a book I own is in an actual book or in digital form? If I add a note to a book it doesn't seem to appear as a note for a recipe, thus this is not the way.

I think most members create their own bookmark to show whether they have an e-book or the actual book  https://support.eatyourb...92993-Bookmarking-a-book

Ok, decided to give it a try. I've added 51 books now. Of those 20 are not indexed. Of those 10 were not in the database, 4 with ISBN, the rest not. As I'm having a really boring day I feel like starting to index one of the rubbish books of the last category. The amount of ingredients is limited. I'd just need to translate them. Hmm.. too ambitious for a beginner?

rodinia - we recommend that first time indexers start with a short, simple book. We do have several of Bart van Olphen's books listed and two are already indexed, one is being indexed now. So if any of your Dutch language books should be linked to a book we have already indexed, you don't need to index it again as once it is linked, our index gets shared with your edition.

Yes, I know. I've chosen a simple and not too long book to index and submitted a request for it. Just a few ingredients per recipe, and the indexing instructions look simple enough. Lets see how much work it really is.

OMG, now I'm sold! I just found out that I have 16 main dishes featuring kohlrabi in my paper book collection! Many of these in books I hardly ever look into because who knows why. I get a veggie box every now and then, and there's always something in it where I absolutely don't know what to do with. I think I'll cook something Indian with it.

That's great rodinia. That's one of the joys of using EYB - finding recipes in books you would never have looked in. 

Originally Posted by: rodinia

I'm trying to figure out whether this website is for me. I have a rather eclectic collection of cookbooks, in various languages. I found some of them in in the database in English, which is great for searching, but not all. Would I want to index books myself, and if so how useful would it be for me to find recipes if I have to search in various languages? Even if those books exist in English mine are in French, Dutch, German, etc... thus I could not index them in something I can search with easily. Also, is there an ingredient search that combines names, like I get recipes with e.g. courgette when I search for zucchini, something that drives me mad when searching through book indexes of English books. Looking for advice.

It's your fault for working so hard at school!!   I only wish I could master another language, there are so many great Spainish and French books out there that are not in English.

Originally Posted by: rodinia

OMG, now I'm sold!

Way to go, rodinia! I love your "light bulb" moment - it brought a smile to my fact. There will be many more as you use EYB. I am still astounded at how it opens up my cookbook library, and I find new recipes, and even recipes i'd forgotten about but loved in the past.

I think asking EYB to include non-English language cookbooks is a very big ask, even if it were limited to the main European languages. I have a few foreign language ones -37 French, 12 Italian, 1 Spanish out of 635. Small enough number for me to search manually if planning a foreign dish or something from a specific foreign writer.

EYB do a splendid job and  I am so often grateful to the indexers, professional and amateur, who make my searching  so much easier.

Yeah, I understand what you say. I'd love to index my foreign language books. Looks like a nice task for boring weekends. It's not that the recipes are so special or specific to those countries but just things I happen to have. I want to be able to search them, and if I want to do that I need to index them for myself. Maybe turns out someone else has these books and is happy that the indexation exists. Hey, if I were to buy cookbooks in my local store instead of the big international online shop they'd all be in languages other than English. Not everyone lives in countries where books default to English.

My kohlrabi curry: Wow! It's still bubbling away but so far it tastes marvellous! might have added a bit too much chillis though, or deseeded them poorly. I've added some lean protein and will eat it with rice for a full meal.
https://www.eatyourbooks...2477990/gujrati-kohlrabi

Originally Posted by: Atomizer

It's your fault for working so hard at school!!   I only wish I could master another language, there are so many great Spainish and French books out there that are not in English.

My husband and I decided we would want to learn conversational Spanish and started doing Duolingo.  My husband surpassed me in number of lessons he has taken. Never too late and at our age, it keeps our brain working. 

Originally Posted by: Rinshin

My husband and I decided we would want to learn conversational Spanish and started doing Duolingo.  My husband surpassed me in number of lessons he has taken. Never too late and at our age, it keeps our brain working.

Oh yes, and some languages have so many similarities that you just learn them by actually being in those countries. Anyway, back to topic. I had a lot of green chilli today :D

Yay, I may index my first book. Which I'm sure not many people will ever add to their shelf, if at all. But it's dear to my heart for various reasons, and it's easy: not too many recipes and not many ingredients - and even less when excluding the pantry items.

I understand and share the frustration of using the search system here. My professional background is database technologies in particular R&D and deployment of text retrieval systems. One of the common commercail requirements I have to deal with is searching bibliographical data.

Elsewhere here I posted about the difficulty I have with there being no field/attribute level search capabilities. An examplar is German where I want to find books about German cuisine but not thorse written in German or published in Germany. For example I have a copy of https://www.eatyourbooks...c-german-baking-the-very and shortly a copy of https://www.eatyourbooks.com/library/221332/german-baking-cakes-tarts-breads (the UK edition) but not https://www.eatyourbooks...german-baking-book-cakes (the US edition); I note that the categories assigned to this two editions are different!. UK: Baking; German and the US: Baking; Desserts; German.

I have the same problem with Italian, Chinese, ; I want books with that in the title but not the language.

I won't even raise having a thesarus capability (useful for different names of ingredients.)

ThePatheticBaker - I hope you understand that EYB is a very small company so we cannot provide every feature that every member may wish for. We do our best with the resources we have available.

We are very happy to make any data changes that members request such as correcting typos, adding missing book covers and improving category tags. Just email us using the Contact link at top right (or under the menu on a phone). Though I don't understand your complaint about not being able to search for cookbooks on German cuisine. The search filters on the right side of search (or under the Filter menu on a phone) allow you to search by many categories including Ethnicity. Here are the books on German, Italian and Chinese cuisine. If you aren't familiar with using filters, Tutorial #3, accessed from the green Need Help? button at bottom right (not available on phones) walks you through them. There is also this Help page.

I'm also not sure if your request for an ingredients thesaurus means that you don't realize we already link all versions of an ingredient name. So a search by courgettes will also show all recipes for zucchini. We will also link all the known spellings of an ingredient name (and even mis-spellings) - for example there are six variations of za'atar linked to that ingredient. And filo pastry has twelve variations linked to it.