Show HN: Find the best recipe for any two foods, based on over 600k recipes
foodpairing.ninja
foodpairing.ninja
1) Exclude recipe that include particular ingredient(s). (dietary restrictions)
2) Tooltips in the column headings that explain the various ratings and indexes you are using
and i'll add one my self, perhaps cross reference these ingredients with nutrition data so i can do something like:
i need to eat more iron and calcium
My wife, in turn, is vegetarian and a very picky eater (she has "texture" issues with food). These sorts of features would be very useful for me to cook for her.
General appeal to the universe: If feeding a group, particularly vegetarians, DON'T go for a "use everything" strategy. That's like ordering Supreme pizzas for a group - if everyone dislikes one ingredient (but different for each), all you've done is made everyone unhappy.
Mind fleshing out that idea a bit more? I don't entirely understand what you're getting at, given that most people don't try to include as many ingredients in a dish as possible just for the sake thereof.
You would think so, but my experience says differently when it comes to being a vegetarian.
Take an random "average" (i.e. off the top of my head) US meal: some sort of noodles with a beef-based sauce, green beans, and biscuits. But the green beans have ham in them, and the biscuits are made with lard (I spent some time in the South, where ham is a seasoning and not a meat, it shows).
You'd think "well, gee, if we just make the green beans w/o ham, and the biscuits without lard, we can serve portobello mushrooms or a second vegetable or a vegetarian sauce on the noodles and the vegetarians will be happy!". And for me, at least, you'd be right, and I suspect in general.
But instead, what happens is that they make a second, distinct meal, into which they throw as many vegetarian things as they can find. Say, green peppers stuffed with quinoa, tomatoes, and artichoke bits. Or a kale salad with cooked eggplant and red peppers. etc.
When they order pizza, they get pepperoni for the meat eaters, but they get the olive/green pepper/onion/spinach/tomato chunks/mushroom for the vegetarians. Why not just cheese? The cheese pizza almost always runs out at gatherings I've been at that were lucky enough to have it as an option. (Note: I'm not addressing the vegans here, because I'm not a vegan so I have no real experience, and it's much harder to do "like the meat eater version, but vegan")
Okay, "as many vegetarian things as they can find" is hyperbole. But I'm faced with, instead of getting the same thing the meat eaters get, minus meat, is a conglomeration of things, at least one of which I'm likely not to like.
I think it's because people think simple vegetable options are "boring", and they need to spice it up. (and rather than use actual spices to do so, they try for variety in the same dish) That's my theory, anyway.
Hope that addressed your question...I sort of rant-vented a bit. I'll also add that I don't generally expect people to accommodate my desires, I just find it sad when they try and mess it up.
If you serve a dish with 10 things in it, it's much more likely than more people will dislike it than if you serve a dish with 1 thing in it (thus why pepperoni pizza is popular as a party item, vs a Supreme pizza). I only mentioned it because it seems to be a poorly understood truth when it comes to vegetarians. (as in, people know not to get overly complex meat dishes, but somehow think the opposite when it comes to non-meat dishes)
I think you might just happen to be a more 'picky' eater than the friends and associates I cook for and with, excepting the vegans, perhaps.
Other places prefer big stews with everything mixed together.
Neither is inherently “better” than the other.
Is this what vegetarians believe the rest of us eat?
That said, I did say I spent time in the US South, and I'm originally from Pennsylvania (Home of Scrapple!), so my food expectations might be a little off :)
That said, there's some food related statistical analysis here that may be different from what Google does {i.e. Google's analysis might be generic -- but they have been returning recipes for a long time}.
Google tends to return results from allrecipes.com, and I've had good experience with it.
Congrats to foodpairing ninja - hacking on food stuff is fun!
My suggestion is to spend some time thinking about the pitch - because right now it seems really complicated for how simple it is to use the tool. For instance, to me as a user, it isn't immediately clear to me what this tool is - are we pairing ingredients for a single recipe? Is it meal planning - multiple dishes that go together?
Allow me to brainstorm some ideas. Take them or leave them as you may!
make "Pick an ingredient to Start" smaller and somewhere where it's viewed more as an instruction than a title (maybe right above the table in bold & medium gray (#696969 or so)
Make the title explicitly state the problem / solution (rather than instructions)... something like "Find the Best Recipe by Ingredient" - I'm sure you can wordsmith it better.
Try to express it simply and clearly enough that you feel comfortable deleting the two paragraphs at the top starting with "Go ahead and search [...]"
As it happens, I find the hacker news post more informative than the site itself about what this tool does. I would replace "food" with "ingredient" in the title of this post, though, since "food" is too vague and gets back to the whole "is this for meal planning?" question.
I greatly enjoyed the "Worst Pairings" and recommend people click that. Red pepper ginger ale, LOL.
I've always wanted to make something like this, for when you've got some stuff in the fridge but don't know what to make.
Input: "Eggs, carrots, beef, whatever"
Output: Some tasty looking recipes by rating.
I suppose I'm looking for a 'Ok Google, what can I make with peas, a poussin, and half an empty can of Doctor Pepper?'
Now that would be cool.
Turn.
Season - salt & peppa, and if they have thyme
Turn again, leave until skin is crispy.
Warm plate.
Turn again, add 'half empty can of Doctor Pepper' to deglaze pot, leading to the syrup to stick to the chicken underside.
Plate.
Peas served freshly boiled, assuming fresh and sweet peas. Plate.
I may even try it...
It got difficult because I was at the same time thinking about a way to store the recipes so that they could be searched by ingredients and that isn't trivial (worse that ingredients could be super or sub-specified -- wheat/raw wheat). I was also scraping all recipe blogs I could find to get the recipes, this is also way too complicated for a total beginner.
That being said recipe ratings are so useless.
I swear 75% of negative recipe reviews I've read go something like this:
> I substituted the flour for corn starch, the butter for applesauce (watching my figure!) and the pasta for some awesome butternut squash. Since my SO can't tolerate dairy I smartly replaced the cream with mayonnaise and the parmesan with my own special mixture of bread-crumbs crisco and salt. THIS FETTUCCINE ALFREDO RECIPE IS DISGUSTING! WORST I'VE EVER HAD!!!"
And then of course somewhere near the top you'll always have an actual review that leads with a note about people who post reviews of their own concoctions instead of the recipe at hand.
Maybe it should be "Find the best recipe from this short list of 2 foods ..."
From mobile, allow me to scan a barcode of an ingredient while at the grocery store and find a recipe so o can get all the proper ingredients.
Also start asking the price of anything scanned to start collecting costing data for each item and ultimately recipe and portion.
For example: "my budget is $25 for two and we want to eat a fish dish"
I'd also want to know what kinds of certain vegetables to get. For example, the difference between sweet tomatoes and sour tomatoes is the difference between a loved friend and a great cook, and an idiot who shouldn't have been let into the kitchen ; ). Same with the different kinds of onions, and so forth. While, as they are, the 'what to buy' list is moderately useful, it would be 100x more if we had greater details!
Edit: Want to add something else. Haha, it shows ginger ale and red pepper as one of the worst combinations. It feels that someone should experiment, and make something good out of that. It doesn't feel too wrong (as wrong as, say, soft cheese and yogurt).
Has some glaring omissions: doesn't find capsicum but does have red pepper.
Needs definitions of the ingredients. A cucumber where I am (Norway) means what is known in the US (at least in NC) as an English cucumber. But the site doesn't make the distinction. If I make a cheese and cucumber sandwich I would expect English cucumber to be used.
Nonetheless, an interesting idea and a good start.
As I was going through the top pairings I noticed a strange pair of "milk and poi" ...it looks like it's picking up the word "points" as an ingredient
More whitespace between navigation and ads please. Also, for my UI intuition, it would make sense to flip search box and "Show __ entries".
Overall, fast and fun to see some ideas. I do like the "what to buy" list, as it shows what a well stocked kitchen should have on hand.
http://the-toast.net/2014/09/04/eighteen-kinds-people-commen...
Do you have plans to open source your algorithm?
Seaweed and unsalted butter is on the menu for this evening.
They combine toasted nori with high-quality Breton salted butter. It's a delicious combination (but you need the salt!).
Amazing potential for a site like this, though. Should partner with Forks over Knives folks to get the word out.