COOKING FOR ENGINEERS!!!
I learned how to cook from this site like 20 years ago! I still use that format on my home recipe cards sometimes, but now I’ve just gotten so used to it all recipes look like this on my head. Great format, taters guna tate.
The real site also includes a paragraph description, this is just a quick reference card that’s assuming you have already cooked the recipe a few times, not great for learning it the first time.
Hucking fell. Ima just download it to remember this exists. Thank you
The guy is pursuing a patent for it, so I’m not sure other people can use it XD
Mix how?
Well
I started to draw recepts as git trees with mermaid. This presentation is just better.
I have never seen that in my life and it’s perfect.
This example is imperfect because you also need to mix the dry ingredients together before the folding in. I know that but it looks like this chart assumes everyone knows it. But the idea is sound. I like it.
…and this table would still work, since you could write this in that empty square at the bottom!
I believe this design breaks down once you prepare an ingredient that then gets split for use in two or more later steps.
But now I’m thinking which kind of diagram could be used as well. Some adaption of an UML activity diagram maybe?
I ran into this exact issue when I was making these diagrams for my own recipes: https://git.tilde.town/gamerdonkey/recipes_for_engineers#known-issues . My workaround was just to have instructions to set some aside and use it later.
I find this layout works best for in-the-moment reference while cooking, and the 2-dimensional nature of it is what really makes it useful. So I think of splitting an ingredient as like lifting some of it out into an imaginary third dimension before inserting it later at another step.
Can’t an ingredient be there twice?
But you want to do the first phase together
Then two tables? Or rows in the middle to mark the action to split the ingredient in 2?
rows in the middle to mark the action to split sounds the best to me
Create a separate card for that ingredient, and in the main card list “add X% of <other card>”
I like that idea, if only for the fact that it opens the door to recursive recipes.
A pie with itself?
List it twice?
No.
Or if any of the steps requires a more complicated instruction that can’t be expressed in a few words. It wouldn’t break the structure of the diagram, but it wouldn’t be as beautiful.
It is a fun idea though, maybe there is another format that works.
This diagram is classic “engineer developing a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist in a domain they don’t understand”
The diagram does have benefits. For example it shows which steps can be performed in parallel if multiple people are cooking.
I don’t need a diagram to do that but maybe my experience is atypical
Similarly, it also easily identifies which part of the recipe each ingredient goes to. You can do this by splitting up the ingredients list as well, but that doesn’t really go against it being a good idea.
I’m a software “engineer” and also passionate about cooking. Both are arts. You can’t reduce it to an algorithm
And concise! No more frantic scrolling on my phone with batter-covered fingers
Why is mix included twice?
Mix the sugar, vanilla, and coffee first. Then mix in the eggs.
it’s two different steps, but I don’t find the chart so intuitive,
IMO there shouldn’t be borders between the actions and ingredientsedit: that would make it worseOh. I think then the table would benefit from an additional row up top of subheading columns featuring step numbers (1, 2, 3, etc) to make that clearer.
Annoying that they did not even mention the original site: https://www.cookingforengineers.com/
Which does seem down right now, so archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20260729050049/https://www.cookingforengineers.com/
This guy was the foundation of my cooking skills… 20 years ago. Damn.
I found the recipe but apparently the design in the OP wasn’t perfect, they have slightly updated it: https://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/327/Espresso-Brownies
Interestingly, not the whole site is down, but the homepage is
Damn, even that site has a life story before a recipe
Very cool tho
If you put a recipe on your webpage Google will ignore that shit. Butter and eggs? So few words, many numbers. Boring.
So you have to add a narrative if you want search engines to pay any attention, or even count the page as content.
Google could just fix this, but no, we’ve all adjusted to it.
I had no idea it was about too few words. I always thought it was that they add all that fluff to maximize their advertising revenue, making you scroll and scroll through a story before you find the recipe. Seems like either way, it’s thanks to Google….
Maybe originally a couple decades ago, but every food blog template added a “jump to recipe” button pretty shortly after those started to be a thing.
The site being down fits with the ‘for engineers’ theme
Joking aside, it was down because it got Reddit hugged to death, since a post on the frontpage of /r/all mentioned it in the top comment.
Now it’s back online
Just because we can’t code for shit and insist on doing everything ourselves…
Absolutely love this way of setting it up! but it’s only almost perfect. It has weight in mass instead of volume and temperature converted to celsius. I only need a proper measure of the pan and it would let me make it without any conversions.
This is kind of a normalized process diagram to illustrate functional programming paradigms. I read this as it was posted in a programming community here on Lemmy a couple of months ago:
https://www.lihaoyi.com/post/WhatsFunctionalProgrammingAllAbout.html
This seems like it wouldn’t scale well for more complex recipes, and for the given example I’d prefer a list of steps instead, e.g.
- butter and flour an 8x8-in pan
- preheat oven to 350 fahrenheit
- melt unsalted butter (4 oz)
- mix with sugar (1 cup), vanilla extract (1/4 tsp), and 1 shot fresh brewed espresso or very strong coffee
- mix with eggs (2)
- fold in ap flour (1/2 cup), cocoa powder (1/3 cup), baking soda (1/4 tsp) and table salt (1/4 tsp)
- add to pan and bake for 30-40 min
Could always make a few of these for any required subassemblies and then one that puts them together.
But yeah it’s hard to beat a succinct list.
I think it depends on how much of a verbal versus visual thinker you are. I’m very much the latter, and I’ve been using the Cooking for Engineers template for years. One nice thing about it is still having an ingredient list for shopping or mise en place and steps together without repeating a bunch of text.
Also, bigger recipes will usually have parts that are done concurrently, and the boxes with those steps will stack vertically. The example is one sequence all involving the butter, so that’s already really the worst case scenario for this format.
Those are good points! Thanks for sharing.
Here’s an open source library for generating these from markdown https://mossblaser.github.io/recipe_grid/tutorial.html
But where am I going to put the six paragraph AI generated anecdote about my grandmother?
In white text on white background at the bottom of the page where the rest of the SEO goes.
You know, I don’t hate this.
Let’s simplify websites significantly. Everything SEO/AI slop appears below the fold in white text.
The point of the AI slop / random pointless exposition is to maximize the number of ads a user has to scroll past to see the actual recipe. What incentive would a website have to put that at the bottom?
It started as a SEO thing where websites with longer texts got a better indexing on Google, thus more ad revenue.
“And Nanny only used Hershey cocoa powder. Click my Amazon link to buy it from my shop!”
