I have about a dozen cookbooks crammed in the top shelf of my cupboard. Half of them contain recipes that I use once a year, if that. The rest take up valuable space. If that weren’t bad enough, I inherited two full boxes of recipes from my late mother-in-law, who saved every clipping she found.
About five months after she died, I decided to make a dent by organizing her recipes by category. That worked for the first 100 of them. Then I tried to enter them into a Word document and gave up after I had entered three recipes. The task was too tedious. There is no easy way to input old recipes, but there are mac cookbook software programs out there that will make the job a little easier.
What I Need in a Mac Cookbook Software Program
Most of the software I found on the market offers more features than I’ll ever use, such as calorie counting and nutrition guides. I need software that will not only help me organize the boatload of new recipes that I’ve inherited, but to help me plan my weekly meals. Importing recipes from my computer is also another convenience that I would like. I decided to download the trial versions of each of these software to test them first.
Shop N’ Cook
I quickly chucked Shop N’ Cook because I couldn’t stand the way the interface looked. For a mac cookbook software program, it looked very Windows-like. The recipes were hard to read on the computer screen. Mainly, it was the interface and the $50 price tag that turned me away. One good thing I can say about Shop N’ Cook is that converting recipe ingredients to increase the serving was easy.
SousChef
Next, I tried SousChef. The interface looked much better, as far as the design goes. The overall format is similar to a three-column blog, with a crisp and larger font. On the left, you have a variety of folders. The recipe database is listed in the center. I liked the way the selected recipe displayed on the right and in a more readable format.
The first folder is the Recipe Library, followed by folders for searching, recent imports, recently cooked, grocery lists, cuisines, desserts and family recipes.
The Recipe Library folder is automatically highlighted when you open the program, displaying a complete list of all the recipes in your database.
Whenever you search for recipes or ingredients, you are taken to the Search Results folder, where you see a list broken up into two groups. The first group is the “Local Results”, which shows the recipes in your database. The second group is the “Cloud Results”, which shows user-generated recipes from the database on the SousChef site.
SousChef has a variety of good features and recipes. I was able to make a grocery list; sort the recipe database by name, category, cuisine or rating; search for recipes based on what I had in my refrigerator; export recipes in a virtual card, PDF and text format; make new folders in the sidebar; view recipes in full-screen mode with fantastic results; import the recipes on my computer; and add a recipe.
Importing recipes took a bit of practice. Otherwise, I was very happy with this mac cookbook software. The $30 price tag was very reasonable. Before I make a buying decision, I check online to see what others have to say first.
Several users reported losing data when they tried to edit their recipes while many others gave SousChef their highest recommendation.
Computer Cuisine Deluxe
I liked the overall layout of Computer Cuisine Deluxe. The program’s theme has two options: the default blue or the red and white gingham tablecloth. What I liked most was the enormous recipe database that comes with this mac cookbook software and the many different ways that you can organize them.
The recipes are very easy to read and are divided by four tabs: main, notes, photo and nutrition. You can also convert recipes from US to metric measurements and vice versa. Plus, you can substitute ingredients, multiply fractions and figure out quick conversions. You are not able to scale ingredients, which I find strange, given everything else you can do.
Planning your weekly menu is fairly simple. Select the recipes you want, and then click the Make Grocery List button. What I would have liked was the ability to combine the ingredients list into one list before I sent it to my iTouch directly from the program. Instead, I have to combine several files into one before I could upload my list.
Both the Add New Recipe and Backup Recipe features were not available in the demo version. I’m not sure why, but this bugged me. Another thing that had me concerned was the password dialog box that shows up every time you launch the program. I don’t know why they require you to have a password (which could get lost or go bad) to open Computer Cuisine Deluxe, but it was a deal-breaker for me, even for $30.
YummySoup!
YummySoup! has the best interface I’ve seen for mac cookbook software. You can toggle the recipe views between lists and images, which makes for a very pretty interface. Also, you have ten themes to choose from.
Everything about this program is user-friendly. Import images into your recipes with a simple drag-and-drop. The built-in importer for popular recipe sites makes importing much faster than YummySoup!’s competitors.
Scaling recipes is a snap. YummySoup! will duplicate the recipe before it scales for the serving portions that you select. That saves on having to repeat the task later.
Emailing a recipe to myself was not a problem. However, since I am using the demo mode, I was not able to post recipes to my blog, Twitter or Facebook accounts.
I did not like the way that YummySoup! exported the recipe to my desktop. Instead of exporting it into a text file, it exported it in the YSR format. When I clicked on the file, it imported the recipe back into the database, which created a duplicate.
Importing files also left much to be desired. I could not import Word or PDF files, which means that I will have to enter these recipes manually. While I was able to plan a weekly menu with the drag-and-drop simplicity, I was not able to create a grocery list. That feature is supposed to come on the next update.
Overall, I enjoyed playing around with YummySoup!. I plan to hold off buying it until I see what the next upgrade has to offer. For $30, you get some strong features in this simple mac cookbook software.
MacGourmet
Although I’ll never use every feature in MacGourmet, I can see why it is the leader in the mac cookbook software genre. I’m glad that it comes with a detailed user manual because I’m going to need it as far as calculating nutrition and making cookbooks are concerned.
MacGourmet’s interface is easy to use. After changing the theme to something that I liked, I tried the importing and exporting features. While I was able to export recipes into a text file, I was not able to import them in Word, PDF or .txt formats. I spent the next hour importing soups and stews from the AllRecipes.com recipe site, thanks to the user manual.
Exporting files into a .txt file is easy. You can also export them in the following formats: iPod note, iPhone, binary, MasterCook Mac and MXP, Meal-Master, rtf, and TasteBook.
Adding recipes was easy, as far as adding basic ingredients, photos and directions are concerned. I plan on reading through this section of the MacGourmet user manual so that I can learn how to use all of the recipe functions.
Instead of adding the recipe to the main database, I added it to the Appetizers folder, which was empty. You can enter recipes, recipe notes, wine notes and lists in the folders in the left sidebar.
I was also pleased to discover that I can look up and delete duplicate recipes. The more recipes you put in, the higher the chance that you will duplicate some from time to time. That’s a must-have feature for me.
The meal planner is my favorite tool in the program because I can drop-and-drag recipes straight from the list to the day I want to cook them. Even better, I can plan my menus weeks in advance so that all I have to do is print out a shopping list when I’m ready.
I’m really enjoying the cookbook feature, which is the main reason why I decided to buy MacGourmet over the other mac cookbook software. This feature allows you to collect your favorite recipes and export them as a PDF file, which you can then self-publish on sites like Lulu.com or CreateSpace.
Initially I had some confusion about MacGourmet versions and pricing. You can get MacGourmet 2.0 online for $25, minus the cookbook, Mealplan and Nutrition plugins. If you want these plugins you’ll have to buy them separately. MacGourmet Deluxe comes in a box and with all of the plugins included, for $45.
Conclusion
Mac cookbook software is a great way to unclutter your kitchen by keeping all of your recipes in one place as well as organize your shopping.
