Recipe Management

Copy recipes from the Internet

Import recipes from Meal-Master and MasterCook

Import recipes from MicroKitchen Companion, Pocket Express and Recipe Processor 2000

Calculate recipe nutrition

Share recipes with other users

Export recipes as HTML

Scale recipes

Convert recipe units

Add photographs to recipes

Add photographs to recipe procedures

Add media (audio or video) to recipes

Organize recipes into folders and subfolders1

Enter recipe reviews and ratings

Advanced recipe searches with "and" and  "or"2

Share searches with other users3

Flag recipes as favorite

E-mail recipes from within the software

Customizable recipe displays

View nutrition for each recipe ingredient4

Calculate recipe costs

Automatically eliminate duplicate recipes5

Recipe spell checker

Meal Planning

View daily, weekly and monthly meal plans6

View meal and day total nutrition

Calculate meal costs

Share meal plans with other users7

Move and copy meal items

Add an entire meal plan to a grocery list

Menu Management

Calculate menu nutrition

Share menus with other users

Calculate menu costs

Add images to menus

Ingredient Management

Create new ingredients

Add photographs to ingredients

Add any number custom measures to ingredients8

Import USDA nutrition updates

Share ingredients with other users

Enter multiple prices for an ingredient

Cooking Reference

Searchable library of cooking techniques

Add photographs to cooking techniques

Add media (audio and video) to techniques

Searchable cooking glossary

Share reference information with other users

Shopping

Create an unlimited number of grocery lists

Create grocery lists from meals, menus or  recipes

Calculate grocery list cost

Group grocery lists by grocery aisles

Share store and ingredient pricing data with other users

Create grocery lists involving multiple stores

Inventory (Pantry)

Track what you have on hand

Determine what you can make with what you have on hand9

Create a grocery list to restock inventory

Deduct on-hand items from grocery lists

Share inventory data with other users

Publishing

Publish cookbooks in Microsoft Word

Create user-defined publication templates

Print recipes on index cards

Tools

Unit converter tool

Backup application database

Compact application database

Database of cooking web sites

Built-in support for pen scanners

Help and Support

Illustrated online help

Searchable help with index

Animated training tutorials

See the August 2004 issue of Smart Computing magazine for a review of the best cooking and recipe management software. Living Cookbook was their top pick and their "Smart Choice" for August 2004. Click here to see the full article.

¹ Refers to the ability to organize recipes in a hierarchy. For example, you can create a cookbook chapter named "Main Dishes" and a subchapter named "Meat Main Dishes" and a sub-sub-chapter named "Beef Main Dishes", etc.

² Refers to the ability to create complex searches with boolean operators (e.g. search for all recipes that have fewer than 200 calories or fewer than 75 calories from fat and have "chili" or "stew" in the recipe name).

³ Refers to the ability to save search criteria to a file and share that file with other users. For example, you might have a search named "Low Calorie Recipes" that searches for all recipes with fewer than 200 calories. You could save this search to a file and share it with other users. They could then search their database using the same criteria.

⁴ Refers to the ability to see the contribution of each recipe ingredient to the total recipe nutrition. For example, a recipe might have 600 calories. Living Cookbook can tell you that 150 calories came from one ingredient, 25 from the next, etc.

⁵ BigOven eliminates duplicate recipes during import, but can't eliminate duplicate recipes once they are in the database.

⁶ Refers to the ability to see day, week or month views of your meal plan (without having to print them first).

⁷ Refers to the ability to save all or part of a meal plan to a file and share it with another user such that they can view and edit the meal plan in their copy of software.

⁸ Refers to the ability to add an unlimited number of custom measures (units) to an ingredient. For example, you might want to add pound, kilogram, ounce, cup, pint, tablespoon, etc. as valid measures for an ingredient.

⁹ Refers to the ability to tell the software what you have in your kitchen and have the software list the recipe that you can make with the ingredients that you have. BigOven has a similar feature, but it is limited to three ingredients.