NOTE: Reviews were written in early 2000; some information may be dated.
for Your Mac
I like to cook, but I've always had a devil of a time organizing and retrieving my recipes. Long ago I rid myself of 3x5" cards and began entering recipes in MS Word which, when printed, fit nicely into a 3-ring binder. That's a cumbersome approach; too much repetitive entry, no search capabilities, and so on. After all, recipes are as much database-oriented as text-oriented.
This led to my tracking down three shareware programs. A couple require that you have FileMaker Pro ('FMP') installed, but read on for alternatives. And be sure to check the websites for latest releases and updates.
Computer Cuisine 2.5
Creator: Mike McGee
Shareware: $10 (free future updates)
http://home.pacbell.net/inaka/
FileMaker Pro 3.0+; available for both Mac & WindowsKathy's Cookbook 1.0
Creator: Greg Lucas
Shareware: $5
http://www.kathyscookbook.com
FileMaker Pro 3.0+The Computer Cookbook™ 2.5.4
Creator: Craig D. Rhodes, Jr.
Shareware: $20
http://members.aol.com/~cdrhodes
FileMaker Pro 2.0+ and SDK (doesn't require FMP);
available for both Mac & Windows
Cookbooks should have certain qualities and features. By tradition, cookbooks are organized into chapters listed in a table of contents. An index at the back lists recipe names, ingredients, and so on. Usually there's a conversion chart so that cooks can switch between, for example, English and metric measures. Better cookbooks have step-by-step photos or pictures of finished creations. To be really useful, a cookbook should also have a glossary to explain unusual or uncommon ingredients, cooking terms, and information about measurements and substitutions. The most essential quality is ease of use.
Why use a computer program instead of paper cookbooks/recipe cards? Because well-designed software excels at tasks like sorting, calculating, creating shopping lists, retrieving, editing and printing. But that means that a program worth its salt (so to speak) should aim to perform those tasks as easily and completely as possible—especially if you expect it to function as a recipe box for your own creations.
That said, how do these three programs meet the needs of the cook/recipe-maker? I set about testing them by spending one-half hour with each. I figure that most users want to master a program's basic features in much less than an hour (assuming some preexisting working knowledge of FMP).
Here's what I found:
Like the other two programs, Computer Cuisine ("Cuisine") presents recipes both in list form (multiple recipes) and individually. With Cuisine, an on-screen list view has card-like tabs at the top that are titled Recipe Name, Type/Category (rice, etc.), Style (Italian, etc.), and Servings. You can either view a list of all recipes or select a narrower list such as those containing rice, German style, etc. Each tabbed category can be sorted.
There are two ways to find a recipe. In any list view, you can choose a recipe and click it to bring up an individual recipe-like card that looks much like what you're accustomed to seeing on paper. Or you can find a recipe by entering one or more search criteria (e.g., potatoes, German) and a list of recipes meeting your criteria appears under the tabs.
Cuisine earns praise in several areas. Of the three programs, it wins the appearance contest. Graphically, Cuisine is in a class by itself. It's also quite intuitive, has clear documentation, and it's easy to customize. For example, if you create a Norwegian-style recipe, you won't find "Norwegian" in Cuisine's drop-down Style list; but you can directly edit the Style list to include it. Extremely good feature.
Unlike the other programs, you can't adjust ingredients automatically for different servings (quantities don't occupy a separate calculation field). Nor can you create shopping lists.
Cuisine offers a type-in conversion table for creating equivalents. The table is only marginally useful; for example, I took the quantity "1.5kg" from one of its recipes and tried to convert it to pounds. Oops, no kilo-to-pound conversion available. The table doesn't include common abbreviations—the assumption is that users will know "ml" in a recipe is Milliliters in the table. Perhaps.
Cuisine has a cleverly-designed pushbutton printing system. Want a full-page grayscale copy? Click. A card-size recipe in color? No problem. It works as promised except that clicking "print" sends the command directly to your printer without any chance for user control (it overrides FMP's printing setup). The downside is that you can't select a portion of a list view to print; it's all or nothing.
Cuisine occupies a healthy chunk of digital real estate (the download is just under 3MB) and includes about a thousand recipes.
Kathy's main page is a 24-button touch pad arranged below four headings: Entrees, Sides, Desserts, and Miscellaneous. Clicking the "soup" button under the Sides heading, for example, brings up a list of soup recipes. Clicking a specific soup recipe name in the list brings up the individual recipe "card." Each recipe "card" has four columns: Ingredients, Amount, Measurement, and Instructions.
Because you enter quantities in a separate field, changing the number of servings recalculates the quantity of ingredients needed for your recipe. Neat. If you wish, you can add a recipe's ingredients (one click) to your shopping list.
When you create a recipe, you enter fractional amounts (e.g., 1/2 cup) in its decimal equivalent (.50). Kathy's Cookbook converts the decimal number to a fraction, the form most familiar to American cooks.
Kathy's Cookbook is an easy-to-use program that offers quick push-button access to recipes. Its outstanding features are instant conversion of ingredient quantities, automatic decimal/fraction conversions, and shopping-list generation. You can also modify fonts and text colors, adjust printing characteristics, and check spelling using FMP controls. It's also the smallest of the three programs (less than a 1MB download).
Because of its push-button interface, Kathy's Cookbook isn't seriously handicapped by not having a sorting option. But it is limited by having 24 pre-defined categories. My wish list includes user-customizable buttons and clear directions for turning off password protection. And a user-customizable background color; pink fails the Guy-Thing test.
The demo version gives you access to most features you'll need to evaluate the program. When you register, you'll also receive an additional 50 recipes.
You'll see two main buttons on the opening screen to The Computer Cookbook. One is for viewing and entering new recipes and the second for viewing an index of recipes under these column headings: Recipe Name, Cuisine, Food Group, Category, Serving Size, and Marked File. Each recipe is categorized using these fields, and you can sort your listing by any of the first four column headings.
From the index list, you can click on a recipe and calculate a new serving size. As with Kathy's Cookbook, this is the advantage gained by entering ingredient quantities in a separate field. Great feature.
You can also find recipes quickly by specifying one or more search words (e.g., pasta plus vegetables). Hit your enter key to create a list of recipes meeting your criteria.
Version 2.5 adopts one of Cuisine's strong suits, allowing you to customize fields (like adding "pasta" to the Category field) directly from the field drop-down menu.
Unique to The Computer Cookbook is the "Marked File" feature. Let's say you want to print several recipes for an upcoming dinner. Save time by "marking" those recipes, then click "Print Marked Recipes." All marked recipes are then printed out one per page in a form suitable for filing in a 3-ring binder. You can adjust printing characteristics via FMP. Although its printouts may not have Cuisine's eye-appeal, they are clear and easy to work with. In the kitchen, that's what really counts.
Two more unique features: (1) when entering a new recipe, you enter fractions as fractions and avoid decimals altogether; and (2) you can email recipes from within the program.
FMP version is 2.3MB. The SDK application version is 658K; add in the recipes and the size grows to about 4.4MB.
So what's my buying advice? With exception of The Computer Cookbook, none of these programs is really cost-effective for the home kitchen unless you already have FileMaker Pro or intend to get it for other uses. On the other hand, if you already have FMP, all three are nominally priced. Considering that each includes hundreds of recipes, they cost no more than regular cookbooks.
I didn't find any clear-cut winners in the group (anyway, who would dare assign a mouse rating to food-related products?). Computer Cuisine has the superior interface, but it lacks automatic quantity conversion which many cooks would rank high on their list of desirable features. If hard-disk space is at a premium, quantity conversion is critical, and a shopping list is an important feature, then Kathy's Cookbook shines—while giving up search capability and customization. The Computer Cookbook offers excellent sorting, finding, quantity conversion features, email capability, and both FMP and non-FMP versions.
I found that entering recipes in both Kathy's Cookbook and The Computer Cookbook to be basic typing exercises (both companies generously supplied me with passwords so that I could toy with all their programs' features). The new-recipe feature was disabled in my demo version of Cuisine so I can't speak to the ease of data-entry. However, I presume that it functions much like other FMP templates.
None of the programs' recipe templates has fields for inserting graphics. No program features a glossary or similar chef support. And, so far, none provides an easy, direct way to to add a recipe to your personal website.
Bottom line: Download a demo copy of the program you think will best fit your way of kitchen working. Give it a fair test. Then fork over your shareware fee and happy cooking!
Addendum
Just when one thinks everything is nailed down, a program called Amy's Recipes appears. Actually, it's been around since 1995, but it never showed up in my search routines. Rather than post a separate review later, I'll deal with Amy's Recipes briefly:
Amy's Recipes 2.4
Creator: Tim Bobo
Shareware: $5
Does NOT require FileMaker
http://home.flash.net/~timbobo/MacShareware/amys_recipes.html
Most notably, Amy's Recipes doesn't require FileMaker Pro. Instead, it's a hypercard stack. The obvious benefit is that for five bucks you can have an attractive recipe book on your Mac. The major limitation is that you don't have all the sorting, calculation fields, and search power that FMP provides.
Amy's Recipes features an editable table of contents, color or black-and-white viewing, balloon and on-line help, and a clean and easy user interface. It comes with several hundred recipes and you can enter your own either directly or by importing text files.
Amy's main screen is divided into a Category Index on the left and a list of recipes for each of the categories on the right. Click on a category and the corresponding recipe list appears. Then simply click on a recipe name to display the recipe in a new window. You can also find recipes by using key words and phrases.
The "mini cookbook" is a clever feature. Rather than select and print recipes individually, you can quickly put several selections into the "mini" window and then print the batch all at one time.
If you want a simple Mac cookbook but don't have FMP, Amy's Recipes should fill the bill nicely. It's easy to use, cheap, and doesn't take up much space (just under 1MB). And, finally, it has a good look and feel to it.
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