Forum

I'm having a new issue with ingredient searches that pick up vast numbers of recipes which don't have the ingredient. I have 49,002 recipes on my bookself.  If I search for corn, I get 18,726 results,  So essentially, I'm being told that over a third of my recipes include corn.  Searching for carrots produces 15,571 recipes. Not surprisingly, when I skim through the results, most of the recipes don't include the ingredient from the search.  I've had this problem on my iPad and my laptop so I don't believe it is related to my devices. Any ideas on how to stop this?

Apologies, there is a new bug which our developers are working on.

I think that was probably while the developers were working on the issue - search seems back to normal now.

Thank you!  The number of results for both searches is way down.  But I still get results that don't make any sense. Why would Peas and Pancetta from the Barefoot Contessa's Make it Ahead cookbook turn up under a search for corn?

We are in the process of upgrading our search mechanism and there have been a few unforeseen glitches. Our developers are working on them now - they have restored the old search for now so your results should be as before. If you still see odd results, do a hard refresh on the search page. If still getting odd results, clear your browser cache/history then do another hard refresh and that should clear the issue.

Hi, I'm having the same issue still today - tried clearing cookies/cache and refreshing but no luck. The site is also generally being quite sluggish. Is this being fixed? Thanks

Very slow. 

Slowness is fixed, but I'm still having the search problem. When I search for broccoli for example I get ~1600 results and the first 4 don't even contain broccoli (based on the results it seems to be pulling up carrot recipes too). For anyone else with this issue it seems that searching with " " marks gets around it.

This is a known issue with our search because the ingredients search also looks for linked ingredients, so the search results can shown unintended results. It is on our developers to-do list to improve this. The best way to avoid it happening is to use filters which are direct matches to ingredients rather than word searches. Filters are on the right when using a laptop/tablet and under the Filter link on a phone. So for broccoli you would add the filter Ingredients /  Vegetables / Green vegetables / Broccoli. This reduced the Library Online Recipes results from 38,777 results with a broccoli word search down to 5,081 with the filter applied -https://www.eatyourbooks...p;f_ingredient_group=223
 
If you would like to learn more about Filters, try Tutorial #3, accessed from the green Need Help? button at bottom right (not available on phones). We also have comprehensive Help Pages including a section on Using the search filters.

It looks like the issue is that our old search sorted results by relevance so recipes with the ingredient in the title appeared at the top. I have asked our developers to ensure that the new search does the same.

A nearby bodega has a mountain of white onions for sale. That intrigued me - what can I do with white onions? So I searched the recipes on my Bookshelf and found almost nothing useful. An occasional white-onion recipe but nothing much. I got:

1) A list of recipes for "onions," which goes into 5 figures. 

2) Recipes that include onions and something white, but not white onions. 

3) Recipes from the Library, most of which are not on my Bookshelf.

So how to find recipes for white onions? 

If you want to find a variant of an ingredient e.g. red onions or white onions you need to enter the full ingredient name in speech/quote marks. If you don't then the search is looking for all instances of the individual words e.g. the first search would give recipes with red apples and onions. This is the search of Online Recipes by "white onions". Every recipe contains white onions.

I would warn you that  white and yellow onions were counted as store-cupboard ingredients so will not always have been indexed. But certainly there are plenty of recipes with white onions in Online Recipes so hopefully there also are on your Bookshelf.

A search with quotation marks doesn't work. It produces one of the three results I've described.

And what about the recipes that are in my cookbooks? 

If you want to search the recipes in your cookbooks you search using "white onions" on your Bookshelf Recipes. If you put the words in quotes then you won't see recipes just with onions and another ingredient with white in the name.

I told you a few hours ago: the quotation-mark search strategy doesn't work. Either it delivers the same results as without the quotes, or it shows the results from the Library rather than from my Bookshelf, which means that most of the recipes it comes up with are recipes I don't have.

And if the search is only for online recipes, then I will see few if any recipes from the cookbooks I own - and isn't that central to the purpose of EYB?

bittrette - it seems like we are miscommunicating. Yes, the main purpose of EYB is to search for recipes in the cookbooks you own. To do that you search your Bookshelf not the Library. And if you have a lot of online recipes on your Bookshelf and only want to search in your cookbooks then you select the filter Book Recipes in the right side of search (or under the Filter link on a phone). I don't understand your comment "it shows the results from the Library rather than from my Bookshelf" - you select either Bookshelf Recipes or Library Recipes yourself from the tabs at the top of the site. Our search results will show what you select yourself.

I also don't understand your comment that searching by white onions shows the same results as "white onions". When I do those two searches of my own Bookshelf I get very different results and the search with speech marks around the ingredient only shows recipes containing white onions. This is those two searches in the Library:

Library Online Recipes search for white onions - 26,896 results https://www.eatyourbooks.com/library/recipes?q=white%20onions&online-recipes=true

Library Online Recipes search for "white onions" - 4,199 results https://www.eatyourbooks.com/library/recipes?q=%22white%20onions%22&online-recipes=true

The second search delivers very different results. Please email us with the URLs for the searches you do with and without the speech marks that deliver the same results and we can investigate further for you.

Bitrette: try using the bracket strategy.. (white+onions).... and use the filters for veg, filter by onions, and red onions, with red onions filtered as a negative! works for me ;-)  - hyperlink is the listing I get in "online recipes" in EYB library