Content is the key here: you get interestin'only with loads of content. There's a legal component here not to forget: Allergies; if you suggest something wrong, you're in big trouble.
Tommyu

I don't think most people would take the time to maintain their inventory on the site, but that doesn't mean it's not a great idea for a fine-tuned search engine. If you had a recipe search that let you put in a number of ingredients and then showed all possible recipes, that would be a neat tool. Including extra parameters for all the ratings you mention would let the user drill down even more.

You could handle allergies, dietary constraints, etc. just by having an "exclude" parameter on the search. You accomplish the same end without having the liability issues vanhees mentions.

This would be fairly simple to implement. The only real difficulty would be generating the data for the recipes. Most recipe databases just treat each one as a block of text, and this database would need to separate ingredients into individual fields for efficient searching. That's just a data entry issue that would be one hurdle in bootstrapping the content.

Thanks for the comments so far. I agree there are a lot of ideas here and it could be implemented in various different ways. The main issue, particularly for me, would be making a usable interface and using Ajax and all that jazz to make it as simple and straightforward as possible for the user. I was also thinking that having the ingredient inventory would be too much of a hassle but that is why I decided to ask here, to get opinions. Perhaps provide some helpful feedback on what other features a recipe site should have that is not found on some of the current ones.

Thanks, Joe

I think that this is a good idea, i also think that it would be very tedious to input all my ing. and everything you suggest, Personally when I look around at food websites, i have an idea of what it is i want to make already, and I am looking for some recepies that I feel comfortable making.... not what i have on hand; because i already know what i have.

check out http://fooddiva.lewismediadev.com/ she has an interesting site

How about an added feature whereby there is a link to a local supermarket website? In this way, a shopping list can be generated from the missing ingredients in a certain recipe. Also, these shopping lists can be compared in terms of cost for the budget conscious.

why get into site when one can have a software in their disposal?

i'm not sure what you mean saigon. It almost sounds like you're suggesting installing software into your garbage disposal :P

Do you mean it would make more sense for this to be a piece of software? I personally like thin clients especially when it involves large amounts of data that changes often.

What if you had a second part, where users can suggest alternatives to the existing ingredients...So instead of Parsley - use Bubba's Slow Cook Vegetable Party Mix (or something like that)...Then supplement the normal recipe with alternative methods...

Inside of saffron use another product...Hopefully the suggestions would be based on what they have substituted before...So instead of listing your ingredients (which I agree very few people would do)...You can list alternative cooking methods/ingredients to a particular dish the user had in mind...

Instead of a tuna casserole using 4 tablespoons of butter use 2 tablespoons and 2 tablespoons of olive oil (not sure if that works but that is what I am talking bout)...

Jim

well, you make a business model and improve your idea to address their concerns.

Here's a site that captures a more general list of your inventory and then recommends recipes - http://www.cookingby...bers.com/frames.html