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Assumed Ingredients in Every Kitchen?

Rapid account: Meaton 3
meaton3
8 years ago

When I use the “Find Recipe by Ingredients” feature, I see that I’ll get matched with recipes that claim I have 0 missing ingredients, but when I look at the list of ingredients, it does in fact include ingredients that I do not include in the query.

For example, if I say all I have is a banana, it will tell me that I can make a Whole Wheat Pie Crust that requires bananas, salt, and whole wheat pastry… I assume there’s a master list of essential kitchen ingredients that Spoonacular assumes every kitchen has, but I can’t seem to find that list. Can you tell me where I can find it?

Rapid account: Spoonacular
spoonacular Commented 8 years ago

Exactly. But not all spices obviously, cumin and cinnamon and other spices are not expected to be available.

Rapid account: Meaton 3
meaton3 Commented 8 years ago

Ok, I understand what you’re saying. So spoonacular assumes I already have variants of flour, sugar, oil, and spices.

Rapid account: Spoonacular
spoonacular Commented 8 years ago

Hey, no your question was very clear but it really is only the ingredients I mentioned earlier: flour, sugar, water, pepper and oil. Since we have an ontology we know all their related concepts, so if a recipe calls for wheat flour, ice cubes (because just frozen water), coarse salt or vegetable oil, these are also assumed to be at hand. Does that help?

Rapid account: Meaton 3
meaton3 Commented 8 years ago

I’m not sure if you’ll see this if I don’t reopen, so I’m reopening.

Rapid account: Meaton 3
meaton3 Commented 8 years ago

I can work around it if I can get a copy of a list of the kitchen ingredients that Spoonacular assumes I already have. That’s what I was asking before, so apologize if that wasn’t clear. Does Spoonacular assume I already have all spices (which would explain the asafetida)? Does it assume I have eggs, milk, flour, etc? I assume there’s some list that some rules like this exist because otherwise it would not show that there are 0 missed ingredients.

That’s my question: what ingredients does Spoonacular assume I have?

Rapid account: Spoonacular
spoonacular Commented 8 years ago

Hey, so I looked into those:

“peanut butter” => the recipe really only contains peanut butter as an ingredient that you probably don’t have in your pantry, everything else is flour, sugar etc.

“tomato” => also only contains salt which you should have at home and then the weird asafetida which we also don’t know what it is so it didn’t count against your ingredients. We will find out what that is and add it to our ontology.

So the algorithm does what I expect it to but I see how this is a bit confusing with the pantry items. Can you work around that on your end now that you know the list of pantry items?

Rapid account: Spoonacular
spoonacular Commented 8 years ago

Thanks a lot, I will have a closer look into the last two, the first one really only has a banana (1¼ cup whole wheat pastry flour = flour and salt which are expected to have at hand). I will get back to you tomorrow.

Rapid account: Meaton 3
meaton3 Commented 8 years ago

Sure. I’m using the “Search > GET Find By Ingredients” function. I have it set to minimize missing ingredients.

If you submit an “ingredient” string of just “banana”, the first recipe in the returned array is the “Whole Wheat Pie Crust” (https://spoonacular.com/Whole-Wheat-Pie-Crust-263999) that has 3 ingredients: banana, salt, and whole wheat pastry. Even though I only have 1 of the 3 ingredients, the “missedIngredientCount” equals 0.

If you submit an “ingredient” string of “peanut butter”, the 2nd recipe in the returned array is the “Peanut Butter Snowballs” (https://spoonacular.com/peanut-butter-snowballs-35254) that actually has 6 ingredients: butter, flour, granulated sugar, peanut butter, powdered sugar, and salt. Even though I only have 1 of the 6 ingredients, the “missedIngredientCount” equals 0.

If you submit an “ingredient” string of “tomato”, the 1st recipe in the returned array is the “Tomato and Ginger Chutney” (https://spoonacular.com/Tomato-and-Ginger-Chutney-663555) that actually has 3 ingredients: tomato, salt, and “asafetida : a”-- I’ve never heard of that last one before! And, even though I only have 1 of the 3 ingredients, it still says the “missedIngredientCount” equals 0.

Rapid account: Spoonacular
spoonacular Commented 8 years ago

There is very few like flour, sugar, water, pepper and oil. whole wheat pie crust should not be on this list. Can you please tell me which ingredients you put in so I can try to reproduce that behavior?

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