Annoying that they did not even mention the original site: https://www.cookingforengineers.com/
Which does seem down right now, so archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20260729050049/https://www.cookingforengineers.com/
The site being down fits with the ‘for engineers’ theme
Just because we can’t code for shit and insist on doing everything ourselves…
Joking aside, it was down because it got Reddit hugged to death, since a post on the frontpage of /r/all mentioned it in the top comment.
Now it’s back online
Damn, even that site has a life story before a recipe
Very cool tho
If you put a recipe on your webpage Google will ignore that shit. Butter and eggs? So few words, many numbers. Boring.
So you have to add a narrative if you want search engines to pay any attention, or even count the page as content.
Google could just fix this, but no, we’ve all adjusted to it.
I had no idea it was about too few words. I always thought it was that they add all that fluff to maximize their advertising revenue, making you scroll and scroll through a story before you find the recipe. Seems like either way, it’s thanks to Google….
Maybe originally a couple decades ago, but every food blog template added a “jump to recipe” button pretty shortly after those started to be a thing.
Interestingly, not the whole site is down, but the homepage is
I found the recipe but apparently the design in the OP wasn’t perfect, they have slightly updated it: https://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/327/Espresso-Brownies
This guy was the foundation of my cooking skills… 20 years ago. Damn.
Here’s an open source library for generating these from markdown https://mossblaser.github.io/recipe_grid/tutorial.html
If you are tired of reading of grandma’s hardships in the great depression here is a trick:
Add “cooked.wiki/” (without the “”) to the beginning of any recipe URL, and it will strip away everything but a column with the ingredients and a column with the recipe.
You have to make an account to store recipes, but that’s totally optional.
Someone mentioned an app for this, there’s also one called Paprika 3 that does something similar. This one you don’t need an account to store recipes though. It can also translate weight to imperial measurements, and solve ingredient quantities for portions like 1/2, etc.
Also generally you can hit the in-page “print” button and the print version is often a one-sheet that cuts out the “my family xyz” bs. To be fair, some of those have real tips or hints or substitutions they don’t include in the recipe proper, but a lot of the time it’s just fluff as you can’t copyright recipes without significant extra steps and exposition.
For Android there’s also this: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.flauschcode.broccoli/
Does the same on your phone just share a link to the app.
I’ve never seen much about f-droid. Is some sort of framework/launcher?
F-droid is an alternative to the Google App Store, but upcoming changes by Google will prevent all third party stores from working on standard Android phones.
Is there a way of calling on the mods to pin this, cause that’s useful as hell
Where’s the box for the story about how mother used to make this years ago and how the author made it for a such and such party and guests were asking for the recipe and …
I want to read the authors complete backstory and several holiday pictures and sales pitches on why I should buy their artisanal ingredients, scrolling until I nearly give up.
I feel like the recipe loses authenticity since there is no backstory about how their great uncle came up with the recipe after falling out of a guard tower during WWII.
“When I was eight my great uncle Pete introduced me to his Schweddy balls…”
I actually vibe coded a script that would jump your browser to the recipe for that exact purpose.
That sounds cool and all, but can you vibe code a script that injects more heart tugging stories and additional AI images before I get to the recipe? It should feel like Im wading through slop to find what I’m looking for.
justtherecipe.com is pretty great for cutting out that crap, although not as efficient as the system in OP pic
But where am I going to put the six paragraph AI generated anecdote about my grandmother?
In white text on white background at the bottom of the page where the rest of the SEO goes.
You know, I don’t hate this.
Let’s simplify websites significantly. Everything SEO/AI slop appears below the fold in white text.
The point of the AI slop / random pointless exposition is to maximize the number of ads a user has to scroll past to see the actual recipe. What incentive would a website have to put that at the bottom?
Or its because it was a family recipe passed down and making the recipe reminds you of all the special times you spent with family and want to share the origins of that family tradition, rather than just sharing your grandma’s secret recipe.
It started as a SEO thing where websites with longer texts got a better indexing on Google, thus more ad revenue.
Then put it at the top,
ya big fool
“And Nanny only used Hershey cocoa powder. Click my Amazon link to buy it from my shop!”
I don’t know, what’s a recipe without a popup video and six banners and a “jump to recipe” button that doesn’t work, as well as 99 pictures of spaghetti?
This recipe is missing something. Maybe throw in a backstory.
Eggs from gay chickens and vanilla from gender-fluid vanilla plants.
Vanilla orchids are not gender fluid at all, they are hermaphroditic. And eggs from happy hens just taste better.
I believe this design breaks down once you prepare an ingredient that then gets split for use in two or more later steps.
But now I’m thinking which kind of diagram could be used as well. Some adaption of an UML activity diagram maybe?
List it twice?
No.
Or if any of the steps requires a more complicated instruction that can’t be expressed in a few words. It wouldn’t break the structure of the diagram, but it wouldn’t be as beautiful.
It is a fun idea though, maybe there is another format that works.
This diagram is classic “engineer developing a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist in a domain they don’t understand”
The diagram does have benefits. For example it shows which steps can be performed in parallel if multiple people are cooking.
And concise! No more frantic scrolling on my phone with batter-covered fingers
I don’t need a diagram to do that but maybe my experience is atypical
Similarly, it also easily identifies which part of the recipe each ingredient goes to. You can do this by splitting up the ingredients list as well, but that doesn’t really go against it being a good idea.
I’m a software “engineer” and also passionate about cooking. Both are arts. You can’t reduce it to an algorithm
Same; but imo while “real cooking” is an art, following instructions (a recipe) is basically an algorithm. At least, expressing it as one doesn’t change the opportunities for artistic expression.
Create a separate card for that ingredient, and in the main card list “add X% of <other card>”
I like that idea, if only for the fact that it opens the door to recursive recipes.
Sounds like we’re close to inventing sourdough from first principles
A pie with itself?
I ran into this exact issue when I was making these diagrams for my own recipes: https://git.tilde.town/gamerdonkey/recipes_for_engineers#known-issues . My workaround was just to have instructions to set some aside and use it later.
I find this layout works best for in-the-moment reference while cooking, and the 2-dimensional nature of it is what really makes it useful. So I think of splitting an ingredient as like lifting some of it out into an imaginary third dimension before inserting it later at another step.
I’ve never seen a 3-dimensional recipe (ink in a cookbook notwithstanding), aren’t they all 2-dimensional?
Can’t an ingredient be there twice?
But you want to do the first phase together
Then two tables? Or rows in the middle to mark the action to split the ingredient in 2?
rows in the middle to mark the action to split sounds the best to me
I suppose you could show a split. Doesn’t cascade anymore but flow still works.
This example is imperfect because you also need to mix the dry ingredients together before the folding in. I know that but it looks like this chart assumes everyone knows it. But the idea is sound. I like it.
…and this table would still work, since you could write this in that empty square at the bottom!
Im mgl, I actually cant decipher op super easily
COOKING FOR ENGINEERS!!!
I learned how to cook from this site like 20 years ago! I still use that format on my home recipe cards sometimes, but now I’ve just gotten so used to it all recipes look like this on my head. Great format, taters guna tate.
The real site also includes a paragraph description, this is just a quick reference card that’s assuming you have already cooked the recipe a few times, not great for learning it the first time.
Works for some recipes, but not all.
Also, more detailed instructions are needed. Mix for how long, till what consistency? Baking times and temps usually also say something like “… or until just brown”, or “…until crispy with dark edges.” Because, unlike machines with switches that do exactly the same thing each time, cooking has many variables that simple instructions don’t account for.
Add an asterisk or number to reference a footnote for the steps that need more instruction. This would work really well for a lot of recipes.
It’s best for recipes where you know the techniques already. These are reminders and not detailed tutorials.
Like my bread “recipe”, which I don’t even bother writing down anymore, is just: 1% gluten flour, 29% spelt, 70% AP, 85% water, 15% starter. Sit 90 minutes. 3% salt, 20-25% other. Stretch and fold every half hour until crackly. Split in two loaves, rise, bake at 500F w/steam tray 25 minutes, turn off oven 20 minutes.
There’s a lot of unwritten stuff there, but it fits on a card.
Yeah that’s a problem I’ve encountered with old recipes. Written by those who know the procedure they just need to write down the exact portions. My family’s got foods lost to time that we know the ingredients of but not the method.
The donuts my family makes for Hanukkah, the recipe card just says “add flour until sticky” and like. Thanks great grandmother. Worse though is “add a can of cherries” because guess what has changed over time? Size of that can. By several ounces.
Mix until creamed, mix until stiff peaks form, etc. Any of the “action” steps that require further instruction are going to really mess up this tidy format.
Oh great. Now I want to lay out all my own recipes like this.
… I have too many projects already. XD
Mix how?
Well
The hallmark of recipe design imo was modernist cuisine and the following books on pizza and bread. A lot of the recipes were obnoxious and it’s written by a notorious ex Microsoft cto that turned into a patent troll to finance his cooking nerd bullshit (morally justifiable to pirate all of the obnoxiously expensive books) but props for their recipe format
Very clear, in order of addition, scaling percentages, and in the actual book clear instructions follow which is extremely helpful in the bread one especially
I have Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and I believe its written in the same way…
okay it is a little different, because there is no % or weight measurements, but it is in order similar, with similar instruction style, printed 1970.
Either I cant calculate or the percentages don’t add up.
What is up with the two 100%?I had the same question and found the answer: https://modernistcuisine.com/mc/how-to-scale-a-recipe/
Would’ve probably been helpful to add that, whoops. But once you understand it it makes scaling a recipe much easier. This is less important for stuff like Mac and cheese tbf, but if you go to the bread or pizza book the ratios are much more important
That recipe design reminds me I should learn LaTeX, but I am also lazy, so…
I made an app where the the recipe is saved as a JSON file with ingredients separate from the steps. In the steps instead of saying “mix sugar and butter” if says “mix {sugar} and {butter}” and the app adds quantity there directly. I can scale the recipe and still have the quantities inside the body (“mix sugar (100g) and butter (55g)”).
Nice! I thought about doing the same and then discovered https://cooklang.org/ - looks like it’s a similar approach that you describe
I saw cooklang but only after I made my app. It’s interesting but for me the main goal was to use existing recipes. I wanted to just take something I found online and be able to use it, not have to rewrite it. And I wanted it to handle multiple languages. When the first decent LLMs came up I did some testing and they were capable of transforming recipes into JSON so I build my app around that but the JSON had to very simple. I later managed to add couple extra features (like groups of ingredients) but it’s still way simpler than cooklang. Current LLMs could handle cooklang without issues but my app already does everything I need it to do so I’m not changing anything.
Ah very interesting! I found cooklang to be overkill for my needs as well but the fact that there’s an obsidian plugin resulted in me using it now.
What if the recipe steps include modifiers like ‘add half of the butter’?
It will simply say “Add half o the butter (100g)” and you have divide it yourself. It’s very simple.
BUT
Some recipes will have the same ingredient multiple times like:
Filling: - 100 g sugar - 50 g butter Dough: - 500 g flour - 100 g butterand the app will distinguish between them and put the correct amount in the correct part of the body.
Sauce or is it proprietary?
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.curiana.recipes/
Desktop (Linux only) version is here: https://github.com/kandrelczyk/twili-recipes/releases/tag/0.2.10
Disclosure for AI vegans: The app integrates with external LMMs to parse recipes into JSON but they can also be added manually.
sugar and butter do tend to go into sauces
I tried recreating this style of recipe card and ended up using a JSON tree structure to store the recipe. I also added fields for a little more description so that I could generate a little more traditional lists for ingredients and instructions.
https://git.tilde.town/gamerdonkey/recipes_for_engineers/
Example recipe: https://tilde.town/~gamerdonkey/recipes/lemony_olive_oil_zucchini_bread.html JSON representation: https://tilde.town/~gamerdonkey/recipes/lemony_olive_oil_zucchini_bread.json
Plus then when I want to swap out eggs for I don’t know mustard or something it’s so much easier.
You should probably mix together the dry ingredients before folding them in. So the big blank square in the bottom middle should be “mix” but I guess that ruins the cascading aesthetic and makes it more cluttered, which would’ve also showed the weakness of this design
Also why would you fold in the dry ingredients, maybe this is just some “lorem ipsum” recipe but unless there’s a foam you’re trying to keep inflated you don’t really need to fold stuff in.
So the big blank square in the bottom middle should be “mix”
is see that as an improvement. that square was empty and unbalanced space before
showed the weakness of this design
i guess when you generate such a design per script, then you can replace some of the straight lines with flowing/wavy lines and get a nice design again. (i am thinking like a sankey diagram maybe? but there are probably other more compact variants possible)
