Cross posting some of my Kavey Eats content here because I think it'll be of interest to some of you -- if you have too many cookery books (is there such a thing) and find you don't think to look in some of them very often, this is something you could benefit from -- here's my review of EatYourBooks + fab competition to win subscription.

http://www.kaveyeats.com/2014/06/i-eat-my-books-do-you-eat-yours.html

Very interesting article, makes a lot of sense for those who use cookery books/on line recipes a lot. Does it have a facility where you can tick the ones that come up good, so you know next time?

..."a search on chicken might include every recipe that uses chicken stock, for example ? and are therefore not an option when creating a truly user-friendly database."

This can be a problem, unless you can put in a couple of words, which will refine the search a bit more. Remember...when we first talked about setting up this website and were talking about a search facility, you/Pete asked me what I wanted, any ideas? I said that it would be nice if you could put in 1 +2 +3 main ingredients you had in the search window and it gave you the recipes on this site that had them? Pete gave the option when setting up the site all those years ago. It does narrow down the search and makes life easier. Now, if you have 100s of cookery books, it must make sense to be able to search them quickly in stead of spending a day looking through your books. It is a lot of work putting all your books in though, especially if you have 100s.

Does it allow you to search the type of recipe you want? For example; if you are looking for a chicken +italian recipe, will it work?

Search options are a difficult thing because everyone wants something different from them.

The first person may put in "chicken" and just want any recipe that has chicken in, then will browse the list being drawn into the ones they are interested in.

A second person may put "chicken" in but is actually hoping for a specific recipe that they just can't remember the name of. For them trawling through a list of hundreds may become a chore. They could however as you suggest use some other refinement on what they are searching for. Maybe ticking a selection of parameters like [country of origin] and/or [type of meal starter/main/dessert] maybe even other options about [low calorie/carb loaded] or [meat/veggie/salad/soup] etc....

A third person might actually put "chicken" in and also put "pasta","beans" and "cumin" as they have those specific ingredients in their fridge/cupboards and want a recipe that can use all of those. They won't want 'every' recipe that just has chicken in, or just has cumin in etc.

The a fourth person may type in "checken" because they are unsure of the actual spelling (or maybe just struggle with spelling) and could want any of the previous 3 type of searches from it. I know I find it difficult to search for some Indian dishes without knowing the exact spelling that has been put into the search list keywords for it. You also have to factor in how many recipes/ingredients will have different spellings depending on where you have had them. For exampled what I call and spell as "kebab" is also written as "kebob", "kebap" "kabab", kabeb" and probably several other versions. Speaking of kebabs, there is then also similar dishes from other countries that should maybe be part of a search for "kebab". You might want to see the recipe for Greek/Cypriot 'gyros' or 'souvlaki', maybe "Turkish Kebab" or "koftas" etc...

When it comes to my recipe books of which I have a few, mostly Greek and Cypriot, I only use them as a reference starting point for a recipe or sometimes just browse them for inspiration... Its rare that I would go hunting for something in them to use a specific recipe.

If I'm looking for something I've never made or in some cases (like cornbread) never even had, then I'll do a search on several sites and take a sort of educated average of what I think the recipe should be :-)

Steve

Mum if you read the full post you'll see there are additional filters so as well as entering a keyword (or multiple keywords), you can also specify words to be excluded, and even tick that you want only recipes for a certain course (starter, dessert), and ethnicity, where clearly provided in the recipe.