Forum

I never quite understand what a random sort adds but I'd be happy to be enlightened. There are 6 different sorts and to get a random recipe you can select any of those. If you don't like the top recipe (or any recipe on the first page) then you can choose a different sort or go to any subsequent page of results. How does a random sort differ? Would the random recipe generator give just one result or would it be pages of results like the current sort?

I can see the attraction of having recipes from a book listed in random order. Imagine repeating what the late Julie Powell did cooking through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of Frnech Cooking (1961 edition) it would be boring to spend the first few weeks cooking nothing but soups and the following weeks cooking nothing but sauces. Boring both for the cook and those being served the food. Having the recipes presented in a random order might prove beneficial to the project.

I find myself in a similar situation at the moment as I plan a project inspired in part by Julie Powell — Julie and Julia is a favourite film of mine —, the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge —baking all the breads in Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice —, and Instagrammer Chubbeekitchen who bakes random receipe from one book over two months. My project is intended to take me from being a pathetic baker to a confident and successful home baker in one year by using One Book for One Topic — be that bread, pies (sweet and savoury), patisserie, cakes, cake decoration, biscuits and cookies, — over One Year ( OBOTOY). An education in baking without the expense of travelling to Paris to attend Le Cordon Bleu, Lenôtre or Ferrandi.

However most of the books at my disposal have sections on specific subtopics. For example bread books tend to have a section on sourdough and much as I love sourdough and could eat nothing but that type of bread other members of my family only tolerate it occasionally. They would hate to have nothing bu sourdough breads for weeks. Hence getting the recipes/formulaes in random order could overcome their objections to a type of bread they do not like.

Perhaps what I want is more a shuffle a la iPod Classic rather than Spotify's irritating function of selecting random tracks after a playlist has finished.

I'd love a random sort order. Currently, I use excel to generate a link that takes me to a random page. My priority would be a random page, but also having a random recipe might be a bit of fun. Filters would have to work with the sort, and the single recipe as well.

Hi Jane, The problem with the current sorts is that they always give the results in the same sequence. EG seaching recipes in a book; searching Vegetarian, searching for an ingredient etc. So if your search results are in the hundreds or higher, it is not giving you the insights you want into recipes that appear further down in the results. Because of the (mostly) static nature of the results I tend to just default to the default order.

A link generator or random number generator works and can be used as you describe, but is a more clumsy way of accessing recipes. I love to cook dishes I have not made before, so it would be exciting to have EYB present me with a suggestion or page of suggestions for consideration. It is less exciting if I have to choose the page number myself.

I would also use a random sort if we had one.

For example, just now I'm looking for ideas on how to use up this excess of puff pastry I have in the freezer.  If I just search on "puff pastry" I get 254 recipes from my cookbooks.  The only way for me to get a good sampling of he ideas out of those is to page through most of the 254 results. 

If I could sort:random, then I could do random sort 3-4 times, and get a good sampling.

I was on the fence early in this discussion but now, having read all the comments, I can certainly see why a random sort would be useful in my recipe searching.

I use a random number generator when I want a "random" recipe (usually for cocktails!). To get that  I check the number of pages/recipes EYB actually delivers to me in the desired category (after a search on whatever ingredient I'm after); then I generate a random number (from the range number of pages I have, eg: 72 or XX pages) and then, given I use the default 25 per page, another random number between 1 and 25 ..  and then I just go to that page, and count down the recipes.. so for me,  I'd like the recipes that come up on a page to have a number from 1 - 25 to save me having to count, or a number assigned in the default search - so if my search generates 732 recipes, each of those would be numbered 1 - 732. That way I would only have to generate one random number and be able to go straight to that recipe .. to make that a little clearer here's a concrete example.. so I search my bookshelf for cocktailrecies that include amaretto, EYB returns 94 recipes, that span 4 pages. I can go direct to any of those pages by number by adding the page number in the url, or clicking on the page number - but I can't do the same with a recipe in the list...that's a manual count. SO maybe a <select one recipe from this search> as a randomizer, after the search might be something I would use!

Hi Jane, any further thoughts regarding a random recipe option? I'd still love one.

It is on our developers' list. I hope it should be done within the next couple of months.

Yay!!!