A couple of comments on Isaac's list-

isw > wrote:
-snip-
>
>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?

This is one that's no problem-- I have 3, 4, & 5 start recipes marked
with 3,4, & 5 asterisks.

>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.

I've used word for 10 years and Works before that. I just got
Mastercook a year or so ago. I still have a few hundred pages in
word-- but I put a lot of my recipes in MC. The things I like most
about the change is the ability to search by ingredient- or a
combination of ingredients; ability to make cookbooks out of search
terms. .

Most of all I like being able to enter the recipe and then check the
nutritional value. I've used that feature more than any other in MC
so far. Scaling up and down is also a plus-- my math skills have
gone way downhill the last couple of years.

I still like MSWord for recipes I'm working on. I find it easier to
annotate & change. That might just be because of familiarity- but
I'm an old dog & it's hard to learn new tricks.

Jim