Great place for hacker recipes

Now, I haven't searched the site, so I don't know how many cheap/easy/tastes-good recipes they have there (which are the kind the folks on HN seem to be most interested in). But based on the interest expressed in the aforementioned thread, I think there is a decent argument for it being appropriate for HN.

TrevorJ3• 17 years ago

This whole meta-discussion about how it's hacking because it's open source made me realize: Pirating has been around for a lot longer than the internet. How many grandmothers out there shared copyrighted recipes with friends and family on 3x5 cards? It honestly never occurred to me till this minute that that might have been considered copywrite infringement.

tsuraan2• 17 years ago

According to the US Copyright Office, recipes aren't generally copyrightable. Listings of ingredients certainly aren't, and the instructions can only be copyrighted if they are a "substantial literary expression". I'm guessing that "mix stuff, cook it at 350 until done" isn't going to qualify.

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html for the real info.

req22• 17 years ago

Going by the law, that's true, but what makes a recipe distinct from sheet music? They're both simple printed instructions informing appropriately skilled personnel how to produce a piece to be consumed. "Substantial literary expression" is a hedge. Many chefs have the same kind of distinctive culinary traits as writers have literary traits or as composers have distinctive styles.

TrevorJ3• 17 years ago

So then "open source" recipes are less than a big deal since that is pretty much the default for any recipe, published or not. Hmm, interesting.

rgrieselhuber• 17 years ago

Go Japan!

discojesus3• 17 years ago

will there be a recipe for pg's "goop on rice"?

discojesus3• 17 years ago

ok - what the hell possible reason could there be to downmod that? I am genuinely interested in pg's recipe for goop on rice - it wasn't a joke. Jesus Christ.

ericlavigne• 17 years ago

pg provided that recipe in the footnotes of his most recent article.

http://paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html#f1n

discojesus3• 17 years ago

thank you very much.

wave• 17 years ago

I usually don't want to go out and buy all ingredients needed before making the food. I want a website that tells me the list of food I can make with ingredients I already have in kitchen.

clistctrl• 17 years ago

I've been working on something like this... slightly different though

maggie• 17 years ago

Do you ever have that many ingredients in the kitchen?

That's a valid desire, but I find that 'stuff in the kitchen' amounts to spices, flour, sugar, and leftovers from previous meals...

So you'd be stuck with baking mountains and mountains of bread related products, or making soup.

Radix• 17 years ago

Please don't do things to make titles stand out... If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."

The word hacker here is gratuitous. The words 'open source' give a clear enough idea of how the site operates. And the site should stand on its own.

(I am amused that TrevorJ managed to think a plausible tie in.)

icey• 17 years ago

Agreed, this is getting idiotic. The site is cool enough, we don't need to arbitrarily add "hacker" to titles as though it magically means the link belongs here.

TrevorJ3• 17 years ago

I withdraw my claim that this counts as Hacker news now that tsuraan has made me aware that recipes can't be copyrighted, hence "open source" recipes are pretty much useless as a concept.

So yeah, even my rather tenuous argument is now moot.

antidaily• 17 years ago

Love the idea, not wild about the design - Anyone else think there were some ads on the page at first glance?

jdrock• 17 years ago

Recipes + real pictures of the food after it's made = awesome. I am damn hungry now.

xayide• 17 years ago

I guess these are more science/engineering than hacker, but I think the following cooking sites match the title pretty well:

http://www.cookingforengineers.com/ When I want to make something new and complicated, I go here first. Great layout, photos with every step, and no assumed prior knowledge.

http://www.cooksillustrated.com/ The magazine has more content than the website, but when I took the time to read a two page essay about how to make pork lo mein, down to what cuts of meat I could reasonably expect to find in an American grocery store, I was not disappointed. These are the same people who endorsed wadded up paper towels as the best turkey lifters after extensive testing.

Of course, for real recipe hacking, I go to the substitutions section of the Joy of Cooking to see what insanity I can dig up. My best to date is a non-dairy chocolate cake that used lots of mayonnaise, and I really want to experiment with flax seeds as an egg substitute.

joshu• 17 years ago

Cooks Illustrated is awesome. These people are obsessive and I love it.

ohlol• 17 years ago

What's up with this recipe? http://www.nibbledish.com/people/websolutions/recipes/find-a...

Great place for hacker recipes

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