What if I suggest a structured recipe format and you critique it?

Posted by Conor O'Neill on Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Between this blog and my posting on eGullet regarding the sort of structure people would like to see on recipes in blogs, I received the sum total of zero/null/nada/nialas replies. The world was about as vocal as that time I asked “so do I look good in these speedos?”

In retrospect I should have suggested an initial idea and then asked you all to improve on it. So read on and start entering comments. Critical is good, bitchy is good, offensive is good. Silence is badddddd.

Here are my initial thoughts for “fields” that might be useful in a structured recipe on a blog. My starting point is the RecipeML spec plus fields from Gourmet Recipe Manager and anything else that popped into my head.

From The RecipeML Spec (renamed for clarity): Title Measurement System (U.S., Imperial etc) Creator (Person) Source (Book Title etc) Date (Of Creation or Publication) Rights (Copyright or other) Summary Description (one liner) Preparation Time (overall time) Yield Quantity and Unit (4 pancakes or 5 servings) Meal Category (Starter etc) Main Ingredients Category (Pasta etc) Cuisine Category (Italian etc) Ingredients (each one a separate “item” rather than block text with count/amount/range/unit broken out too) Description/Instructions (as free form block text)

Other possibilities:

Picture(s) (either on the blog/site or externally hosted) Rating (how much you like it yourself!) Difficulty Level/Experience Required Notes (e.g. warnings) Dietary Information (e.g. gluten-free)

Ones from the RecipeML spec which may be overkill:

Equipment Variations Recipe broken into parts (pastry vs filling etc) Subtitle Version Breakdown of Preptime into phases Nutritional Information [tags]Recipes, RecipeML, Structured Recipes, StructuredBlogging.org[/tags]


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