Online Recipes - Better Than Cookbook Recipes? - Useful Information From a Google Search9799217

Online recipes have overtaken the internet and information technology world by storm. On a recent Google search (Oct. 1, 2009), I received 68,000,000 hits on the phrase, "online recipes". I clicked on dozens of these sites and came up with the following results and conclusions.

I found mostly recipe websites where members can find and exchange recipes, post blogs and enter contests and sweepstakes. Some even offer photo contests sponsored by name brand food companies. Some sites contain chef biographies. Many sites house only certain types of recipes. I found international, holiday, soul food, heart healthy, youth club and family recipe sites. Some sites post recipes only for web surfers with specific dietary restrictions.

There are computer software recipe sites that supply webmasters (who post recipe files on their own sites), with tools, in exchange for credit back to them on their sites. Cookbook software companies sell recipe and cooking related software to the internet world.

To answer the question on whether or not I think online recipes are better than cookbook recipes, I would have to say yes they are! Recipes found online and more specifically in ebooks (geared toward a specific cuisine or special grouping of recipes) are usually updated periodically or replaced in data bases. For example, if a recipe has been around for many years and an ingredient in that recipe becomes outdated, it would be discontinued and rewritten with the updated ingredient.

An example of this would be the use of the word "drippings" in decades old recipes. Recipes written today would call for olive oil or margarine in place of drippings (or no form of fat flavoring, due to many fat restricted diets today). The other huge advantage of online recipes is being able to access them (in the kitchen) instantaneously. There are no bulky cookbooks to get in the way!

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