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Units, and recipe index

 
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Mark



Joined: 07 Jan 2009
Posts: 4

PostPosted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 10:03 pm    Post subject: Units, and recipe index Reply with quote

Love the website, but you would not think sometimes it was constructed by engineers. I've had a grizzle about units before, and I think the conversion calculator has appeared since that time. But - we still have - say - cups of salt (a substance with variable density) to gallons (??US or Imperial ones) for brine, when you guys in your refrigeration work would never do anything but specify your brine in percentage, which we can all work out in any units. Generally speaking, volumes of (variable density) dry substances should always be avoided, and weights (technically mass) should be used. We all have accurate kitchen scales these days, they are not expensive, and we should not be tied to the very old fashioned and inexact volumes used in the past. I had an on line chat with McGee about his units in the NYT, and he agreed, but said he had to use them as it was NYT policy. However, this website, purportedly for scientists, should not. Of course the units should be SI, but talking to Americans about this seems impossible due to their cultural insularity.
The recipe index is very difficult to use, as you have done it alphabetically, but you use the adjective rather than the noun to specify where it lies in the list - Anjelica's Tzatziki for instance, should not be in the As, but in the Ts. The problem here is it makes it very difficult to find anything.
Give this some thought and the site will be less confusing to use. Love it otherwise.
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Michael Chu



Joined: 10 May 2005
Posts: 1654
Location: Austin, TX (USA)

PostPosted: Sat Apr 05, 2014 5:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I thought all the recipes have both volume and weight where volume is customary in US cookery. It's possible some of the older articles got missed when I did the conversions and calculations several years ago.

The recipe index is a mess - and I have outlines of how I want it to work - but no time to really sit down and keyword tag or write the code to interpret that data. I have more than a full time job (I generally work 12 hours a day) and our first baby and sit on two HOA boards and give talks and lectures once in a while. I look forward to the day in the future (hopefully not to distant) when I can rebuild the site into what I'd like it to be (in terms of software infrastructure) and begin to earnestly contribute to it in the form of content as well (I've learned a lot over the years that I haven't been able to communicate yet).

I appreciate the criticism and believe me, it does not fall on deaf ears even if you don't see any progress.
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Dude111



Joined: 23 Sep 2010
Posts: 142

PostPosted: Sun Apr 27, 2014 6:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I love your site here Mike!!
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