Show HN: Recursive Recipes – directions to make food from scratch

If you want to make a Reuben Sandwich, you turn to p. 272, and describes the bread, meat, cheese, and sauerkraut. Then it says to spread it with Russian Dressing and points you at p. 364 for that.

The Russian Dressing recipe includes horseradish and grated onion. It also includes Mayonnaise, and for that it points you at p. 363. Another ingredient for Russian dressing is either Chili Sauce or Catsup, and for each of those it points you to p. 847.

On p. 363, there are several paragraphs about Mayonnaise, and 3 recipes for hand-beaten, mixer, and blender versions.

On p. 847, neither the Chili Sauce nor Tomato Catsup recipes have any sub-recipes, but both of them point you to p. 841 for information about Pickling Equipment and Ingredients and they also both point you to p. 804 for a procedure for sealing sterile jars in boiling water.

The jar-sealing procedure on p. 804 points you to p. 165 for an illustration of a tool for lifting jars out of boiling water.

The pickling section on p. 841 mentions that water should be soft and refers to p. 519, the About Water section under Know Your Ingredients which discusses filtration among other things. It also mentions you should only use pickling or dairy salt, and refers you to About Salt on p. 568. And finally it mentions when pickling, you might want to used the Spiced Vinegar recipe on p. 527.

Totally absurd, but fun to play with.

I do find sometimes it says it'll be cheaper to buy it, but in several cases I'm positive it's not, or the price of the product in store vs from the recipe isn't directly comparable.

The example of refried beans is complicated. If you buy a can of refried beans, it won't be as high quality as the recipe provided. The recipe is rich in butter and onions. A can will likely have lard or vegetable oil in it, and very little onion (likely powdered). It also claims it's cheaper to buy the can, but it's because initially the recipe suggests buying cans of beans. If you use dried beans, you're probably spending about the same amount but getting far nicer refried beans.

Anyway, it's a fun project, and the things I noticed aren't really problems and are easy enough to negotiate in the interface. I had fun with it.

I was inspired by the book "Make the Bread, Buy the Butter" by Jennifer Reese. I tried to continue the idea to see how much money+time it costs to continually substitute an ingredient for the recipe of that ingredient.

Sorry for the ads - I use them to make back the $ spent on the domain :). I just toned them down.

Please let me know if there are any other suggestions!

[1]: https://github.com/schollz/recursive-recipes

Also you should keep adding recipes for seawater and soil etc until you have a recipe for creating the universe. And use an apple pie as your example recipe.

For example, the Chocolate Chip Cookies recipes quotes a total of 9 years 29 weeks to make everything, but really the longest lead item is the vanilla beans @ 4 years. So really it's a 4 year process isn't it?

Make the vanilla beans (4 years)

Vanilla grows best in warm temperatures, preferably in the 70’s to 90’s. Cooler temperatures will slow down the growth. Keep temperatures above 60˙F for the most part. Vanilla orchids benefit from regular applications of fertilizer.

It really is good for a laugh, but it’s also an interesting way to visualize just how much goes into something as “simple” as a chocolate chip cookie. It’s the labor of many people all around the world to grow the wheat, the vanilla, the cacao, process the cacao, raise the cows, churn the butter, etc.

I know I'm nitpicking here but I see that some elements have not been broken down ( ex : cocoa powder in cookies) even on absurdly longer time scale. Regardless, good work.

Intuitively, it can serve as a good resource to understand food composition for cooked items.

Before I spend 10 years making the olive oil from scratch, I need to know how to make 'soil'

Save $.01 by making salt from scratch in 2 weeks, 10 hours

They would reject you for not using dynamic programming recipes instead.

Plus it's a slow, crappy website

Would it be too much to add an actual recipe for the pancakes?