Recipe Apps: MacGourmet, SousChef & Yum

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I love to take pictures, but I’m also a foodie. My recipe collection is growing so fast, I find that having Pages documents and folders is not enough, specially when scaling recipes- down for an every day dinner or scaling them up when we have more people over. So, looking around online I found three applications: MacGourmet, SousChef and Yum*. In this post, we’ll compare the use of the three applications with the same 3 recipes.

Kitty

*see note at the end of the article (Update Feb, 2011)

MacGourmet

The first application that we tried out was MacGourmet. With this application, I had to manually enter the recipe ingredients, but just did a copy/paste with the directions. Interface is nice and clean, comes with with three panes: the first one, holds the Recipes, Notes, Shopping Lists, and Wine Notes (the only application that , along with clippings- this last one contains recipe text grabbed using Text Clipping), Featured (recipes from MacGourmet online and Kitchenware/Cookbooks from Amazon), Find results and all of the Collection and Smart Collection to sort your recipes.

The second pane, lists the recipes, and the third one is the recipe itself. You can customize the Display template. If you don’t like any of the pre installed viewing styles, you can download more online. MacGourmet can also help you publish with ease your recipes to a site or to an eBook- however, it supports only Blogger, Blojsom, MovableType and TypePad, which is a big drawback if you want to publish directly to a WordPress based blog.

This application, is like iTunes for your recipes. You can also browse the entire library on a small inspector window, like the Media inspector that you can find in Mail.app or any of the iWork apps. I have a MacBook Pro, and being able to hook it up to an external screen has been helpful: Now more with the Chef View. I just turn the 19″ screen to face the kitchen and I can place on the second screen the Chef view: Big font, no pictures.

One feature that I really find useful is the scaling feature. You can find it while editing the recipe, under ingredients (change recipe to x servings- make sure you click the Scale button and Save afterwards to see the scaled recipe). I wish the scaling of the recipe was more handy, or with a shortcut, and not let me change the original recipe, just display it on the “Chef’s view” window. I’d rather not change the original. What I’ve done so far is scale it up or down, and when I’m done, change it back to it’s original servings… But saving me that step would be nice.

MacGourmet also offers an iPhone app: you have Recipes, Wines, Notes, Shopping and a Sync Button. You sync your iPhone and your mac over a Wi-Fi Network, like most apps do (Things, Documents ToGo or Air Sharing). This comes handy when going grocery shopping and having your recipe book in handy when away from the mac. You can purchase additional plug-ins to enhance your experience: Mealplan (to add meal planning and menus), Cookbook (PDF cookbook creation) and MacGourmet:Nutrition (nutritional analysis). MacGourmet is $24.95 and it’s iPhone app is $4.99. Each plugin can be purchased for $11.95 or you can buy a bundle of the three for $29.95. All around I think it’s a good pair to have to sort out your recipes.

SousChef

Second in line, is SousChef. This application is easy to the eye also. To start, I imported the three recipes I had already on MacGourmet. This is very easy, you can go to File>Import>MacGourmet Database. Everything transferred correctly, even the keywords so you’re all set. The interface also comes with a three pane view. The first one is the Source Pane, which lets you see the Recipe Library, Search Results, Recent Imports, Recently Cooked smart collections and Grocery Lists). Then it’s followed by the other two panes, the Recipe List and Recipe itself. Underneath the recipe you’ll find five buttons: Edit, Print, Mail, Blog and Cook Mode. This last one, gives you a similar option like MacGourmet with the Chef’s View. Here, you can choose to not only see the recipe but hear it.

There’s a command to make your mac talk to you! When you get into Cook Mode, you get prompted with a window asking to calibrate the Text to Speech settings on System Preferences- it even opens up the settings for you. When you close that window, you’re back to SousChef and you can listen to your recipe.

The view settings for Cook Mode, is described also as a ten foot mode so you can place your computer somewhere safe but still read your recipes from across the room. SousChef also talks Blogger so you can blog about it with ease. This app has what MacGourmet lacks, a shortcut so you can scale recipes (Command – Y). this also modifies the entire recipe, not just the quick view mode of it. We’d rather not modify the original! But extra points go to SousChef for making it easy to get to it. Another nifty feature here is the Substitute ingredients on the fly. If you check under the Preferences, you can see that there are already some substitutions, but you can add your own.

SousChef doesn’t have an iPhone app, but there’s one on the works. No release dates yet though. What they do have, is a nifty iPad application. You can check it out at on their app siteand also on the iTunes link here. The iPad application is $7.99. You can buy SousChef for $30, but if you’re upgrading form a competing product you can upgrade for $20. That’s a good deal! I believe SousChef has features that will continue to grow into a more robust application and with the iPad app and soon iPhone app, the future seems bright!

Yum (Discontinued)

The last application to review from the three is Yum. We found about it the latest out of them all. Visually, it doesn’t strike me as much as the other two. But, don’t get us wrong. This application gives you plenty: From iPhone sync to Print on album cards and sharing. You can sync the recipes to your iPhone through a Wi-Fi Network connection. The iPhone version (free on the iTunes Store) lets you browse through your recipes and categories, along with the shopping lists.

They also have Smart Paste to the ingredients list, which is useful when copy/pasting recipes from your old recipe book system (such as documents and folders) or from the web. First, importing the recipes was not that easy, but I exported the MacGourmet DataBase to a MasterCook Mac file and got that one to import easily to Yum. A little workaround, but not painful at all. As its contenders, it also offers Recipe Scaling. Yum is the only application that doesn’t completely modify the recipe. You do have to make some tweaking on the preferences (Under “When printing and viewing recipes” select “Scaled Amounts For All Recipes”). This simple tweak will allow you to view the scaled version but the original servings of the recipe still is the original one, you just have to remove the Scale to Serve option while editing the recipe.

One thing that troubles me is that Yum doesn’t have a specific place to add a picture. You can add it under the directions of the recipe, but both MacGourmet and SousChef have a dedicated spot for the picture, so it doesn’t get on the way of the recipe. This app also offers an easy way of creating shopping lists for you to print and take on-the-go. One other thing that you can print, is your recipes for your old-school album card holder. You can choose to print them to 4″x6″ album cards as well as 3″x5″ index cards- useful when you can’t move your mac or don’t have it with you. One other way to share the recipes is by mail. Yum doesn’t offer blog integration, but the email sharing feature comes handy when trying to send the recipe to someone else. You can buy Yum for Mac for $26.00, and the iPhone application is free. It’s a developing app like SousChef, but this one has more room to grow.

Foodies’ Pick

After serious consideration, at Foodies feel that MacGourmet is a good match for us. I was always leaning to it from the beginning, but SousChef also got our attention. The iPhone sync works like a charm and with your recipes and wine lists at hand, next to the shopping lists the app is a good pick to have on-the-go or even having it as your “in the kitchen” in case you can’t have your mac around when cooking. We hope this first techy review helps make up your mind about what Recipe app is best for you. Our best advice,: test drive them all and find which is the one you feel most comfortable with.

*February 2011: Yum development has been discontinued. We still stand behind our Software pick for MacGourmet.

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