Websites for Food Lovers

By Rachel Singer Gordon -- Library Journal, 8/1/1998

No one site serves as the definitive reference, but each of those reviewed here provides access to a useful collection of recipes and/or cooking information. The larger sites also provide links to lead patrons to more specialized recipe resources, such as sites devoted to diabetic recipes or ethnic cuisines.

MIMI'S CYBER KITCHEN
http://www.cyber-kitchen.com/
Date Visited: 7/12/98
Developer/Provider: Mimi Hiller
Visitors to Santa Clarita Magazine food columnist Mimi Hiller's site should start with the "Category List" in the navigation bar to the left side of the screen. This extensive list of links to other recipe and food-related sites covers everything from general recipe archives and dessert sites to specialized resources such as diabetic resources and food software. Also included are a set of nicely organized links to ethnic cuisines and unique sections such as food humor and spices/condiments.

A quicker way to find recipes is to click on the link to the Food Finder page, which searches the entire site (including Hiller's own, mainly Jewish, recipe collection) and includes a link to the HomeArts recipe finder, which indexes recipes from various Hearst magazines (including Good Housekeeping, Country Living, Cosmopolitan, and Redbook, among others). Visitors can also find recipes and other site information through a quick search from the navigation bar on Cyber Kitchen's introductory screen.

Also on the homepage, Hiller offers an article on how to find food/recipe information on the web, which includes a link to Cyber Kitchen's searchable recipe request line (a recipe/food discussion forum and chat line). Other articles cover kitchen hints and provide cookbook reviews.

Pros/Cons: This site offers a huge amount of information, though it may be slow to find, and most recipes outside the HomeArts section aren't tested.

Bottom Line: CyberKitchen is no The Joy of Cooking, but it's the best gateway to Internet recipes.

VEGGIES UNITE!
http://www.vegweb.com/
Date Visited: 7/10/98
Developer/Provider: Veggies Unite!
Veggies Unite! aims to build an online vegetarian community, including in one well-organized site over 2700 vegan recipes, realtime chat, an online recipe exchange forum, and a monthly newsletter. Useful features are a glossary of cooking and vegetarian terms, an extensive FAQ, a weekly meal planner and grocery list maker, and links to further vegetarian information on the net.

Visitors should start with the main page's recipe directory. Recipes are searchable, browsable by broad category (e.g., pasta, stirfry), and listed alphabetically. In the latter section, the site makes good use of frames, keeping the recipe list visible while displaying the desired entry in a separate segment of the screen.

Browsers can add comments on the recipes or read others' thoughts and (once they have become members) add recipes to their personal meal planner or grocery list. Since recipes are added by visitors, quality and complexity vary, but the comments from others who have tried them can be helpful.

Pros/Cons: Veggies Unite! offers community and cooking, though it's limited to untested vegan recipes.

Bottom Line: This is the best online gateway to vegetarianism.

BAKER BOULANGER
http://www.betterbaking.com/
Date Visited: 7/9/98
Developer/Provider: Marcy Goldman
Baker Boulanger, an online quarterly cooking magazine, offers seasonal articles linking to lists of pertinent recipes (not limited to baking). Casual browsers should begin with the "In this issue" section to read the current magazine, while recipe searchers can click on "Recipes" to get an alphabetical or category listing of the fairly small recipe archive. Clicking on "Search" leads to a search screen that covers both the recipe archive and the articles. Searches result in a manageable collection of fairly sophisticated recipes.

Users can send in a cooking question, subscribe to an E-mail newletter, or browse an alphabetical list of cooking questions/answers. For $35, Baker Boulanger will create a "reproduction" recipe for a food a visitor describes. Due to its scrolling Java news and larger graphics, this site may be slow, but it appears more professional than most food sites, a cousin of glossy print magazines.

Pros/Cons: Recipes here are all tested, although limited in number.

Bottom Line: This classy site is best for casual browsers rather than those seeking a specific recipe.

Alternate Sites

• Internet Epicurean
• The Kitchen Link
  Look to the Internet Epicurean's "recipe exchange" section for some handy kitchen utilities: a cook's calculator that converts weight, temperature, and volume units; an ingredient glossary; a recipe request section; and links to recipe web sites. This online cooking magazine includes more than 4500 untested recipes in its recipe exchange, and its archives are searchable by title keyword, ingredient, broad type, and ethnic cuisine. The Kitchen Link's over 8600 links to other cooking/recipe resources are a good starting point for exploring Internet cooking sites. Its recipe archives as well as the entire site are searchable -- unfortunately, ingredient searches retrieve some irrelevant results. Recipes and other site features are also browsable through a fairly specific A-Z index.

• Searchable Online Archive of Recipes
  SOAR's huge archive of over 38,000 untested recipes is searchable or browsable by general category (e.g., diabetic, recipes for kids, Mexican, and jams & jellies). Searches will generally return huge numbers of recipes, which are submitted by site visitors. Still, this is a good source for hard-to-find recipes.

• Food TV Network
• Good Morning America
• Mr. Food
  Each of these sites gives television recipes and show information, although some offer better detail. The Food TV Network provides recipes (from Emeril Live to Two Fat Ladies) from the last two weeks, divided up by show and then by air date. Good Morning America -- provided by an ABC affiliate station -- provides a list of recipes presented on the show in the past couple of months, as well as some categorized recipes from the GMA archives. Mr. Food includes a list of the past month's TV recipes, as well as a searchable recipe archive. The archive includes recipes from the entire HomeArts site, but can be limited to Mr. Food by using him as a search term.

• Star Chefs
• Great Chefs Online
  Star Chefs includes top chefs and cookbook authors from Paul Prudhomme to Julia Child, with a rich set of links to their biographies, cookbook information, a limited number of recipes, and interview transcripts. Great Chefs Online, a more modest site, gives sample recipes from featured chefs, mainly restaurant chefs who have appeared in the "Great Chefs of the...." regional TV programs and cookbooks. These recipes are featured every month and not archived.

• Top Secret Recipes
• CopyKat Recipes
  These sites allow users to re-create brand-name products at home, although each has a limited number of recipes. Todd Wilbur, author of the popular Top Secret Recipes cookbooks, maintains the Top Secret Recipes site. Although not searchable, this site provides new weekly recipes listed in chronological order. Stephanie Manley's CopyKat Recipes, mainly submitted by visitors, are both keyword searchable and alphabetical, with a separate alphabetical section of actual restaurant recipes. The sites sometimes give different recipes for identical products (for example, Girl Scout Thin Mints).

• Kraft Interactive Kitchen
• Betty Crocker
• Campbell's Kitchen
• Lipton Recipe Secrets
  Each of these searchable sites provides recipes that were created and/or tested in the respective company's kitchens. Each allows the browser to add recipes to a personal grocery list and to store personal recipes online. Betty Crocker and Kraft both provide a meal planning section and include nutrition information in their recipes. Kraft's cookbook section allows the user to browse easy Kraft product recipes by meal or to search by ingredient. Betty Crocker and Lipton offer recipes beyond their own products; the former will search recipes after the user checks off from a preselected list of ingredients. Also, Betty Crocker gives charts of emergency substitutions and weights and measures, while Campbell's provides nutrition information, cooking tips, and a personalized nutrition analysis tool. Where Campbell's features seasonal recipes by product, Lipton offers a weekly recipe demonstration with step-by-step pictures, as well as common techniques, a food and cooking glossary, and monthly recipe contests.

• Cooking Village
• Cooking Light
• Low Fat Vegetarian Archive
  Produced by the publishers of Veggie Life magazine, Cooking Village's "Recipe Club," available via the Search screen," includes thousands of low-fat vegetarian recipes in a searchable -- but not browsable -- archive. Recipes provide nutritional analysis. In addition to searching by ingredient or title, users can search by special option, including food type (e.g., vegan), category, and occasion. Cooking Light's searchable recipe archives include tested recipes from the parent company's magazines (Cooking Light, Southern Living, Progressive Farmer). You can search by nutritional information, calories, fat, and other terms. The Low Fat Vegetarian Archive includes over 2500 fat-free and very low-fat vegetarian recipes submitted by visitors. Recipes can be browsed by category, searched by keyword, and restricted to vegan or other vegetarian types. From the homepage, browsers can search the USDA nutrient database to find extensive nutrition information on almost any ingredient.

• Internet Bartenders Guide
• Home Canning
• Kids Cooking
  Internet Bartender's Guide offers a huge alphabetized list of drink recipes, plus a "bar measurements" list, ways to replicate name-brand liqueurs, punch/party recipes, and a separate list of nonalcoholic recipes. Home Canning is sponsored by Bernardin, Ltd., so all recipes specify its brand of supplies. The site includes a small, searchable recipe archive, a home canning forum, and a large tips section. Kids Cooking lists a small number of recipes submitted by "kids around the world," in such categories as Messy, Sweet & Sticky, and Munchies. Its big bright graphics have kid appeal, but be warned: recipes are not necessarily tested, and some include joke ingredients.