In article >,
Ed Pawlowski > wrote:

> On Sat, 25 Feb 2012 22:21:01 -0500, Mark Farouk > wrote:
>
> >Does anyone know of any cookbook software where you can add your own
> >recipes to make your own (digital) cookbook?
> >
> >I would like to be able to copy and paste recipes I get off the
> >Internet instead of having to type every word. Maybe even include a
> >pic of the food which often accompanies online recipes. I don't even
> >know if such a thing exists.
> >
> >Thanks,
> >Mark
>
> I use Word. I have separate files for sausage, cakes, etc to make
> finding them easier I also have Access so I can put them in the
> database for simple searching.

There are a lot of issues with using any sort of text editor for recipes:

It makes it very difficult to treat the ingredients differently from the
preparation method, etc. -- you want to be able to search on "egg"
without finding every instance of "beat the egg whites ..." for example.

Separating recipes in any way into separate files is awkward, too; where
do you put "sausage gravy" -- in "sausages" or in "gravies"? The huge
advantage of having a single database is that any given item can be in
as many different categories as it needs to, and it can be moved
instantly between them.

Also, it's nice to be able to link recipes that are related -- say, a
frosting you use with several cakes, so you don't need to have the
frosting repeated over and over -- and what do you do when you need to
change something about the frosting; find every instance of it and
change them all? Good luck.

Or how about scaling recipes for different numbers of servings? Word
can't even begin to do that.

Or attaching ratings -- how can you search for all your "three star"
recipes, using Word?

> There are a few versions of recipe software available, but I've not
> tried them.

I started collecting recipes years before I got a computer or internet
access. My first "recipe software" was dBase II, with scripts I had to
write myself; it had serious limitations. I migrated to Word when that
became available to me. It was somewhat better, but still very limited.

Later I got Master Cook, which was far easier to work with, but sadly
they stopped supporting the Mac, and with OS X, it just didn't work any
more.

For several years, I've been using MacGourmet, and while not "perfect",
it is by far the best recipe software I've used.

At present, my collection is just about 8,000 recipes, and MacGourmet
can handle it without any problem at all. Yeah, I know that a lot of the
recipes are near-duplicates, but one of the big advantages of a *good*
system is that they are there if you ever need them, but otherwise they
don't get in the way at all.

Isaac