Microblog Memes

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/

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 ...

Here's an open source library for generating these from markdown https://mossblaser.github.io/recipe_grid/tutorial.html

But where am I going to put the six paragraph AI generated anecdote about my grandmother?

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.

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?

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?

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.

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)").

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.

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

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.

Kind of reminds me of the output of qdirstat.

Mix how?

Oh great. Now I want to lay out all my own recipes like this.

... I have too many projects already. XD

This seems like it wouldn't scale well for more complex recipes, and for the given example I'd prefer a list of steps instead, e.g.

1. butter and flour an 8x8-in pan
2. preheat oven to 350 fahrenheit
3. melt unsalted butter (4 oz)
4. mix with sugar (1 cup), vanilla extract (1/4 tsp), and 1 shot fresh brewed espresso or very strong coffee
5. mix with eggs (2)
6. fold in ap flour (1/2 cup), cocoa powder (1/3 cup), baking soda (1/4 tsp) and table salt (1/4 tsp)
7. add to pan and bake for 30-40 min

My dyslexic brain hates this. Words and lists are better.

Because normal people are idiots. They are not going to understand any of this whatsoever. That's why you have to put the actual instructions with the ingredients.

It's a neat diagram, but I'm unsure what they mean by "ignore it." This is exactly how good recipes have been designed for many many decades, minus the nifty visual cheat sheet and with better instructions. [i.e. Do you beat the eggs? How thoroughly? How do you know when it's done baking?]

I absolutely get that this might help those who are more visually based learners, but the structure of recipes already follows this pattern. This turns the written instructions into a simplified chart, and I hope more thorough written instructions are simply being elided here.

I do like it though. It would certainly make a nice visual shorthand to glance over at during prep.