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]
March 21, 2006 at 11:39 pm
Seems good idea, and I can understand the appeal of searches, categories, etc., but it also seems a lot of work for a lazy critter like me who throws stuff up on the blog with minimal time at hand and the girlfriend ringing on the mobile every ten minutes trying to figure out why I’m not home!
We do have a similar chef program for use in-house, but honestly we don’t use it every day but rather to figure out conversions, nutritional info, etc. Our recipes tend to evolve by scribbles in our recipe book.
Maybe what you should do is throw up an example of a recipe in the format you suggest to illustrate the concept.
A big thanks for turning me onto eGullet, by the way. It’s a treasure trove.
March 22, 2006 at 5:43 am
My dsl is shite at the moment so I dropped the ball on this one. . . .I for one, like the idea. I wish I could use it on my main blog. But it will work for my WP blog. I use Resort Hotel to manage my recipes professionally. If this kicks off I might buzz them and suggest a cross-link to ease posting. The initial Metadata set might be too much, but would be good to have anyway. My main database of recipes has all sorts of potential for metadata but I almost never use it. It’s easier to search a specific ingredient common to all, or by name or function date. Love to see how this develops.
March 22, 2006 at 10:10 am
Kieran,
I think you make a critical point about structured blogging in general. If it makes your life harder or more awkward, then all of the more nebulous benefits will not be enough to make you start adding the meta-data.
I’m going to do a mockup of what a recipe input screen might look like. In fact I’ll do two. One with minimal but still useful information added and the other fully populated.
None of the meta-data would be mandatory so if you are just lashing up a quick idea then “title, meal type, ingredients, instructions” would probably be all you’d fill out. But if you are trying out more detailed ones e.g. in prep for a book, then it would make sense to fill out everything.
The reason for all the “attribution” information was that it was a big concern of some recipe creators that structured blogging would only make it easier for others to rip off their recipes.
I’m seeing some great ideas being suggested for how the extra data might be used. e.g. easy generation of recipe cards, creation of a recipe “content management system” that resides entirely in your blog. “Mashups” between structured recipes and structured wine reviews.
I think Technorati tags are the best example of microformats that are simple to do but provide great benefit. You can see I add tags to all my posts. I have a simple tool to do that. Those tags then get picked up by a search engine called “Technorati”. Anyone can then go to Technorati and search for that tag e.g. IceCream and find out what blog posts are out there with that tag. Even better, you can subscribe to an RSS feed for that tag and then get automatically informed whenever new blog posts are published with that tag.
Structured Blogging just takes that one step further and puts some intelligence on those “tags”. So you have an ingredient tag or a cuisine tag. Then when you are searching in the future, rather than typing in “Indian Food” and getting a million hits which are not what you want, you could do a search which says cuisine=Indian, Ingredient=Tamarind.
The main critics of structured blogging claim it will fail because people are too lazy to add the meta data. But if you were going to add a lot of it anyway in “free text” form, I think putting some structure on it actually makes your life easier.
As for eGullet – awesome! Even simple stuff like knife sharpening is done with such attention to detail and passion. It is a must-read for me every day. The commentary on “Masterchef Goes Large” has been hilarious (and less vindictive than the BBC forums).
The UK and Ireland forum is pretty active. I’d say the viewers there would looooove to hear from a maker of ice cream!
March 22, 2006 at 10:17 am
Neal,
All of the structured posts you saw on my blog recently were done with a structured blogging plugin. I just typed the info in the fields and the format was auto-generated. If the recipe idea takes off then there would definitley be a plug-in for it too. They are revamping the StructuredBlogging.org website at the minute and will be adding tons of screenshots. In the meantime, here is a screen grab from the hReview plugin so you can see what the recipe entry form might roughly look like:
Pingback: Gotta Think about This » StructuredBlogging
September 3, 2006 at 9:06 pm
I’m also searching for a good XML recipe format. I don’t like RecipeML, but i haven’t found alternatives so far. I have created my own format, but i have not yet started using it. If you want to have a look at an example: http://www.crupp.de/recipe.xml. Most of the items you’ve mentioned are in there (i.e. meta information like copyright, license, locale (=metrics), servings, preparation time, pictures, and tags (=categories).
I have not yet made up my mind about things like a category tree or notes and dietary information. I’m not sure if categories and notes should be part of the recipe. For me this is an additional information which should be handled separately.
And dietary information/nutrition (i.e. carbs, proteins etc) should be calculated by whatever software you use to manage your recipes. But in this case, you need an abstraction of your ingredients. And this is an overkill, i think.
I’d happily use an XML format if i find a good one. If you want to write one, i’d volunteer to help. I have more sources, php codes to load recipes and display them. I can send them to you if you’re interested.
Chris
September 5, 2006 at 9:47 am
I’ve totally dropped the ball on this effort and it’ll be a while before I can look at it again.
You should consider looking at what the microformats guys are doing in general with XHTML rather than XML. A lot of your XMl approach could be done with some combination of existing microformats plus a recipe-specific one.
There is a recipe brainstorming page which hasn’t moved beyond example recipes on the web. It really needs someone to grab the initiative and suggest an initial approach.
November 20, 2009 at 8:08 am
This is an interesting topic that has been talked about in many placed on the Internet. Let me give you two of my favorite sites that discuss this in detail:
http://microformats.org/wiki/recipe-formats
http://www.formatdata.com/recipeml/spec/recipeml-spec.html
I’m going to start a blog called RecipesToDieFor.com and so I’m researching to decide which format to use. I also recommend bigoven.com for any one interested in setting up an Internet site for recipes.