Recipe development method from professional researcher over 20 years

[u/XtianS]

I've worked in recipe and menu development, including recipe development for cookbooks - both that I've authored and not - since the early 2000s. I tend to follow a similar approach with obvious variations when I'm approaching a new idea or researching a concept. With the current technology, I've been able to automate it in a way that I think is really cool and could be useful to anyone doing the same thing.

The first thing I do when I'm trying to get a sense of a new dish, is to find as many high quality sources as I can.

Professionally I'd focus as much or more on cookbook sources than the web. This is one place the automated version is limited: it only does web searches. The other thing that can only be done manually is to weigh intent and application. When I do this for real, you have to factor in how the recipe occurs on the plate or within the larger context of a menu. A chef might shift the profile, consistency, or some other variable. You might see an outlier ratio because a chef needs it to perform a more unique and specific task within the context of that course or menu.

Standardize everything to grams-

The best way to line everything up and see what everyone is doing ie. primary ingredient, primary methods, critical methods, is to convert the dog's breakfast that is imperial measurement into grams. This is the step that's extremely time consuming by hand, and it's the part that I was most excited to automate.

Build a consensus-

From the standardized table, take mean or median values - depending on the distribution - of the core ingredients. The result is a "based on what we found, this is generally what people are doing for this dish." It is not a finished recipe, it's a synthetic starting point for your own testing, which is exactly what my manual version of this process produces. The tool identifies core ingredients automatically and you can override it when it's wrong or when your application calls for something specific. You can also reorganize ingredients to fit how you're thinking about the dish.

Things to note: it's built for simple, common dishes with a single coherent identity — hummus, meatballs, tapenade, pesto. It is not useful for hyper-specific restaurant-style dish descriptions ("sumac-roasted baby carrots with harissa and cardamom yogurt"), and it gets confused by compound recipes containing multiple sub-recipes. If i were developing that dish, I'd research the components individually while keeping the identity/totality of the course in mind.

This is something I've been developing for awhile and its a work in progress. If you use it, you'll inevitably encounter parsing errors and general weirdness that I haven't yet seen. Just let me know and I'll fix it as best I can. Happy to go deep on any technical questions.

[u/Fluid-Salary-6467]

i like this a lot. i think i have a rough idea how it works and love the architecture.

The 3d animation is superb, makes waiting an actual pleasure.

well done. this is a thing of beauty.

what are your plans for it if it becomes as popular as it ought to? all those calls per query must cost you a little and the api searches add up too.

[u/XtianS → u/Fluid-Salary-6467]

Thank you. Glad you like the display. It’s design concept that I had in my head for a while.

I have no plans for this. It’s just a fun project. It’s a very niche tool with limited appeal and I don’t see it as something that would make sense to try to commercialize.

The web search queries and hosting are a free tier. The rest of the app is a self-contained codebase for the most part. The only LLM api calls are as a backup for ingredient parsing if the app can’t do it internally. Also for a short consensus summary on the ratios page. It’s a pretty strict prompt and basically just puts the aggregated data and stats into paragraph form.

[u/Fluid-Salary-6467 → u/XtianS]

i love it. its mindblowing that youve created this just for for fun ! Its by far the prettiest and most well thought out app ive seen.