Show HN: My cooking app that tells you what ingredients go well together

Initial thoughts having not paid for the app but review screen shots and the website.

Advanced warning - these comments aren't particularly positive. If you're looking for a pep talk, look away now.

Let's start with first impressions before I dig into functionality and actual results:

1) It needs to look nicer. People who like to cook tend to like things to look appealing, particularly as a $1.99 app.

2) Garlic isn't a great example to have as your screen shot - it's not inspiring and it's the sort of thing you have in a draw anyway, not something you pick to make a meal out of. Try something more substantial and interesting - Aubergine / Eggplant say (though the main point below relates to the result for Egg plant).

3) Speaking personally, you need a vegetarian flag which culls all meat and fish (or ideally options to remove meat, fish, poultry individually.)

All of that is simple to fix and you could possibly do in a day or so (most of which would be tagging things as vegetarian or not).

Getting on to the actual results, your main problem is that your data sucks big time, as in unusable, pointless big time in it's current form.

Look at the screen shot which shows matches for garlic and includes cornstarch.

Huh?

Cornstarch is a thickener, it goes with things you want to be thicker, it doesn't go with things you don't want to be thicker. I have no idea why it would or wouldn't go with garlic specifically (especially as garlic is solid and therefore needs no thickening).

I'm guessing that you've automatically mined this data but however you've got it you need a human to review it as I suspect that there are things in there you have to cull because they make no sense and undermine the credibility of the rest of the data.

Do a search on egg plant and you'll get among the results cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, black and white pepper (too common), salt (ditto), flour, butter and vegetable oil. These are not things you match with an ingredient, they're things you season, prepare or use to cook an ingredient. In terms of what you're doing they're meaningless and should be hidden.

Again, that's all easily fixable, you just need to skim the data and pull together an exclude list and edit these out of the results set.

But it then lists semi-sweet chocolate chips, banana, raisins and vanilla extract. Now these may go with egg plant and there may be recipes that use both but they're not natural matches (in the way that say tomatoes - not including on the list incidentally - are). The average user is going to look at them and go "seriously? what am I meant to cook with Egg Plant and Banana".

Fortunately you have a link for that. Sort of. Click on banana in the egg plant results and you get a list of things that go with egg plant and banana (same issues as above) but also a link to recipe puppy for those ingredients. This is good in theory but have you looked at it?

Try it. The link is for egg (rather than egg plant) and banana. Not sure if the issue is yours or recipe puppy's (though I think the later - plant is in the URL). Even if it didn't drop the plant, recipe puppy thinks eggplant is one word, you think it's two so they'd never match.

But worst of all, recipe puppy seems to do an "or" search rather than an "and" one. In any case it certainly can't find me these supposed aubergine and banana recipes which means I'm none the wiser as to what I'm meant to be cooking and makes me ask again where the data is from.

Sorry to be harsh but I wouldn't be selling this in it's current form, I think you're going to damage your brand if you don't work out some of these issues before it gets out there and if that happens you're in the sort of trouble you can't undo easily.

My initial thoughts on the results page is that they are not really intuitive, and a bit hard to look at. Without reading the description, I was confused why some were in caps, other's bold, etc.

It might be worthwhile to experiment with a font-size scaling cloud - it's more intuitive. Instantly I would know tamarind paste goes really well with chicken and coconut, and less so with tangerine.

It's an interesting idea though - I was looking for something like this the other day when I had a bag of parsley I didn't know what to do with... but unfortunately, like the other commenters are saying, if I had used it, I would have been told I need to do something with breadcrumbs and butter, which isn't really that helpful.

Keep working on it - I am keen to see how it unfolds.

Wow, If it works well, it is a boon for people who are not natural cooks, who want to make something homemade, with the ingredients at home.

(I suppose/believe/hope this is a significant market size.)

I would like to know more about the algorithm/science, behind the pairings (and its degree).

Great idea, and nice execution.

Feature request: it would be great if not only it told you what would work well, but also what to avoid.

I've had it on my 'early stages ideas' board for a while for an app that suggests replacement ingredients, groups of ingredients, or techniques. I often have something in mind to cook and then realise at the last minute that I have no parsley, white pepper, lemon juice (etc). Any thoughts on that?

Very cool idea. Off to a good start.

Suggestions: * I'd like an easy way to link to a related ingredient by itself. I.e., If I initially search for basil, I'd like to easily rabbit trail to olive oil, irrespective of basil. * It would be cool to also link through to some of the matching recipes you've indexed.

Hey, this is the missing part of my cooking web app, centered around ingredients you have at home. This can become ultra powerful with some sort of an API. Is there any?

http://www.ingredientpairings.com/?i=AQUA+REGIA made me lol.

If you make an easy translation page for all the ingredients this would definitely be a bulls eye !!! Great app.

Hmm. Caviar goes well with worcestershire sauce, but worcestershire sauce does not go well with caviar.

Cool App! The only problem I see is with people who have bizarre taste. Other than that, good stuff!

this app is total scam! First: graphics make me think it was done by an 8 years old child. Cooking is a great opportunity to show some amazing apps designs. Second: they took an english dictionary, not even worried about filtering only "cooking word" and made some results based on some wired fixed algo.

http://www.ingredientpairings.com/?i=grandma

http://www.ingredientpairings.com/?i=basketball

http://www.ingredientpairings.com/?i=japan

http://www.ingredientpairings.com/?i=space

http://www.ingredientpairings.com/?i=running

http://www.ingredientpairings.com/?i=diving

i say SCAM.

For the android version, could you put a QR code up for the download.

Nice job, works really well

One simple typo to correct on the front page: 'seperate' should be 'separate'...