Recipes have been collected and traded on the Internet for as long as the net has been running. Recipezaar finally pulls all the technology together in a way that fulfills the promise of recipes on computers. It lets you search, then refine the results by categories in 6 facets. The recipes are presented with reviews, other recipe recommendations, computed nutrition facts, serving adjuster, and more. It’s the kind of site that makes me wish I cooked!

One thorny issue with structured data is where does it come from? You could ask users to enter data in separate edit controls, but that’s asking them to shoulder the whole burden. You could let them enter free-flowing data willy-nilly and hope to sort it out later. Apparently, Recipezaar gets the best of both worlds. Recipes are entered free-form, then parsed into structured data for presentation. Contact managers often work the same way. Both recipes and contacts have the advantage of a narrow domain, where the information can be expected in semi-structured form.