I have a very large cookbook collection and, while I never have a problem finding a recipe that I’m interested in making just by flipping through the pages, it’s not always easy to find a recipe right away when I’m looking for something specific. For instance, if I want a recipe for pork chops with apples for a fall dinner, it may take me a while of hit-and-miss searching through books that I think might have such a recipe. This whole process is streamlined with a little help from Eat Your Books.
Eat Your Books is a cookbook search engine that allows you to index all of the recipes in all of your cookbooks to find exactly the recipe that you’re looking for. You can search by book, by author and by recipe title or ingredient. You can even further narrow your search by looking for a specific course. The search engine takes only a few seconds to work, leaving you plenty of time to pick out the book you need and start cooking. The only things that it doesn’t necessarily include are the recipes from your grandma’s old school or church recipe booklets and some of the more recently published cookbooks – and those newer ones are constantly being updated, especially as more people join the site.
If you’re not a member, you can use their search function, but the list of books that the results include will come from EYB’s whole library and it may take some additional time to find a recipe listed for a cookbook on your shelf. As a member of the site, you can select all of your own cookbooks and the results you get from the search will be tailored to those books. They do charge to become a member, but the fees are relatively small and the fact that the site allows you to more fully utilize your existing cookbook collection could very well make the investment worth it.
melissa
September 29, 2011ohg this place is fantastic! I’ve already kicked the tires with their free membership (“I wonder if they have X obscure cookbook?”) and I’m going to buy a year membership come payday.
Oh, and I also asked them to index your site, because I noticed they didn’t have the Baking Bites book…
Heidi
September 29, 2011Nicole,
AWESOME recommendation! I already joined and have started indexing my collection. Thanks for the find!
rainey
September 29, 2011Personally, I prefer putting the recipes I use in my own database. You can do a very simple version that just references the cookbook but I prefer to have all my recipes in one spot so I input them.
Many come from food blogs, the food sections of major newspapers and sites like epicurious. But I find that even the recipes from cookbooks are often sampled and written about on someone’s food blog. If not, then I have to input them by typing. But it only has to be done once. Thereafter, it’s available for sharing, preparing grocery lists, making cookbooks for my kids, referencing menus as for the traditional holiday meals we look forward to every year and also the everyday searches for what’s-for-dinner.
jess☆ @ Multicultural Melbourne
September 29, 2011What an absolutely brilliant idea! Can never have too many good ideas to collect recipes 🙂