Faced with the daily challenge of deciding what to cook for a meal, many consumers fall back on the same, familiar recipes again and again. Cookthink aims to reinvigorate that process with a site that recommends recipes based on what you crave and what ingredients you have on hand.
The heart of Washington, D.C.-based Cookthink, which just launched in beta this past August, is the Recipe Mapping Project, an ambitious effort to index recipes on dozens of characteristics such as what they taste, smell and feel like, and how it makes you feel to eat them. Users of Cookthink can then search by ingredient (pork chop, zucchini), dish type (salad, burrito), cuisine (Italian, Thai) and mood (exuberant, summery), combining up to eight tags to find the perfect meal. Every recipe on the site has been crafted and tested in Cookthink's own kitchens, and the site offers cooking tips and suggestions as well. The Cookthink blog features recipes and daily posts on seasonal ingredients, kitchen tools, techniques and food news, while its Root Source newsletter focuses on a single ingredient each week, examining the best way to buy it, store it, prep it and cook with it.
Membership on the ad-supported site is free, and it sounds like the benefits will be increasing as the site ramps up its personalization features to reflect individual tastes and preferences. Cookthink's founders explain: "We're building Cookthink to get smarter over time, recognizing recipes you save and recipes you pass over, ingredients you prefer, and cuisine types you're interested in learning more about."
Take high-quality content, add a dash of searchability and a dollop of personalization, and what do you get? A culinary version of the music discovery engine Pandora, with the potential to be just as much of a success among foodies around the world. Time to get, er, cooking on this one...?
Website: www.cookthink.com
Contact: partner@cookthink.com
Spotted by: Jacqueline Zenn
Hi, Jacqueline. Thanks so much for this review. Just this week, we've started the Cookthinktank, a group of food bloggers and cookbook authors who will start publishing their recipes on Cookthink. We're very excited about it, as we are about our upcoming "my cookthink" section, where you'll be able to build and save meals.
We're always futzing with the search tool, so if you come across some strange results, please let us know.
Happy cooking.
This is just a fantastic idea. I have worked in the food and beverage industry around the world for the last**** years and love the potential of the concept. I have been working on a gourmet food web site to allow enthusiastic cooks to source great ingredients and, of course, recipes. Nothing finalised. Good luck it should be a great success.
I'd thought of doing something similar last year, as I scoured my pantry yet again with a useless recipe book by my side! Excellent, can't wait to have a play with the site. Melbourne, Aus.
Another site you might want to check out is ours, www.bigoven.com, which has 165,000+ recipes, and lets you search by what's on hand. You can save favorites, "try soons" and more, and share them with friends via RSS. In particular, you might want to try the leftover wizard at http://www.bigoven.com/ingredientwizard2.aspx -- enter 3 ingredients in your fridge/pantry, and find out what you can make! Cheers.