Cookbook talk:Policy/Recipe template

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I think this page should be moved out of the main namespace, but am unsure if it should go to Cookbook: or Wikibooks:. It's definatly a cookbook item, but it's not intended to be seen by the regular user, only by contributers. Any opinions? Gentgeen 02:02, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

That makes sense to me. Kellen Jan 7 (how do i do a timestamp?!) 2005

I think it would be fine to have some categorical information to each recipe (and ingredient) so that a special search can be applied. I'm thinking about things like seasonal and geographical information or classification like vegetarian, vegan and so on. Even better would be to also have things like preparation time and calories available as search terms. A visitor could then for example search for vegetarian italian dishes under 30 min prep. or similar. I think for that to work we would need a specially programmed search module and I have no clue about the MediaWiki workings in that respect... The jewel on the crown would be if you can search by ingredients: 'hmm.. I have carrots, potatoes and chicken [and hopefully some other basic ingredients]. what will I have tonight?' Any Ideas about that? --Elkmann 23:43, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Not sure about the search idea (which I think would be good, but I'm not a developer), but if you click the "what links here" link on the side of the page from Cookbook:Carrot you end up at this page which lists all the recipes that link back to the carrot page, which I think is an important reason to wikify each ingredient. Gentgeen 20:29, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Search needs to be low-maintenence. Tagging recipes is troublesome, especially if the absense of a tag implies a meaning which is opposite to having the tag. (are all recipes not tagged as vegan known to be non-vegan, or should they appear as unknowns at the bottom of a search for vegan stuff?) I see two ways to make searching work.
  1. Make it Google-like, with a synonym database generated from the redirects.
  2. Make it like a music referral service. As you rate recipes, recipes become sorted according to the ratings of people with similar taste in food. This was developed for music so that a heavy metal fan would not get suggestions for country music, etc. The idea should work well for recipes.
AlbertCahalan 01:32, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
I put in a request at bugzilla that the new search function in use at wikipedia be turned on for the sister projects. If you want the developers to listen to us, please vote here. Gentgeen 05:23, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Why are optional ingredients to be listed separately from the main list? It seems as if variations in cooking method or main ingredients (say, oranges for lemons) would make sense as a separate section at the end, but that optional ingredients (say coconut on top of a cake) should be listed in the main ingredients list. Opinions? Kellen Jan 7 2005

Agreed. In some cases, I mark an ingredient as "(optional)". In other cases, I list optional ingredients in a second list immediately after the first list. I don't think it is good to get terribly formal about this sort of thing; the proper answer really depends on the recipe. Some recipes do well with multiple ingredient lists, breaking things up as "filling" and "crust" or similar. AlbertCahalan 06:35, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)


If its only one or two I tend to simply use "(optional)" but for more than that I add a line break and start a ne w list marked optional directly below the first list. While it is useful to have multiple lists they should all be together for clarity. If you're reading a recipe to confirm which ingredients you'll need you need to have them all together so that you don't accidentally miss one. Introducing ingrediants into the text of a recipe that aren't invited in the main Ingredients section is a major pet peeve for me. Grimm 23:43, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] people put recipes in the template!

Twice now, people have put recipes into the template. Perhaps they ought to be saved elsewhere:

03:17, 25 Apr 2005
04:51, 9 Apr 2005

For the future though... how shall we clue people in?

  • I've added a note about it to the top. It might be as well to add it to the end as well. Grimm

One might want to fish those recipes out of the page history. AlbertCahalan 05:39, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

04:51,  9 Apr 2005   68.190.244.102  Chicken Taco???
03:17, 25 Apr 2005   68.9.128.107    Salad w/ Lemon-oil Dressing
20:43, 30 Apr 2005   68.50.62.31     Pickled Bologna

[edit] Template

Hello, on the Dutch wikibooks, we've created a new skin for the template:

Firefox 10:26, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

This is excellent, thanks! We'll probably use something like it! 68.15.29.44 04:31, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Recipes In Progress

Given the open source spirit of "release early, release often", I think that the cookbook would benefit from a template indicating that a recipe is a "Recipe In Progress" (RIP). This would indicate that a given article contains a recipe being created or adapted and should be discussed for possible improvements on the talk page. This way, original recipes that need to be further developed or new recipes that need to be tweaked can be clearly marked as such. Hopefully, this will lead to some testing by the community and at the end, a solid recipe will emerge. It might also be helpful if the template indicates that the recipe should be used at a reader's own risk. Yonkeltron 13:03, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Serves ??

may be each recipe should show how many people it serves and if its a side serving or full meal

And Perhaps a Variants list for the base article for eg for Macaroni and Cheese there's an article called Macaroni and Cheese and with in that page is a list of the different Variants of the recipe and a short Description: Over Baked: Cooked In the oven for Great Taste takes 1 hour Simple: Super quick Takes 10 minutes Stove Top: cook in a pot takes 20-25 minutes

[edit] Weight & Volume

The recipe template recommends use of volumes rather than weights on the grounds that many kitchens do not have scales. In Europe most kitchens do have scales, and a cheap kitchen scale need cost only a few dollars - high accuracy is not necessary.

Outside North America it is far less common to perceive a "cup" as a known volume (8 fl.oz.) and rather to see it as "whatever cup I have close to hand" which may vary by more than 5:2. Furthermore the physical state of an ingredient can cause its density to vary by 3:2 or even more - a cup of white flour can easily be as little as 100 gm or as much as 150 gm. For consistency and repeatability of recipes it is far better to use weight for solid ingredients and volume only for liquids.

I have not found a volume/weight conversion table for different ingredients - is there one?

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