Recipe Site User Guide

Updated: 2026-09-09

This guide covers the normal day-to-day use of Recipe Site: finding recipes and guides, using personal recipe features, planning meals and shopping, and importing/exporting recipes when your account has permission.

The exact features visible to you depend on the permissions assigned to your account. If a control described here is not shown, your role may not have that feature enabled.

1. Finding recipes and guides

Quick search

The search box in the site header supports three scopes:

Titles — searches recipe/content titles.
Ingredients — searches the stored ingredient list.
Full text — searches broader recipe/content text.

The search box provides suggestions while you type. Choose Advanced from the search-scope menu when you need multiple filters at once.

Browse links

The header also provides direct discovery links:

Popular — recipes with the most favorites.
New — recently added content.
All — alphabetical recipe/content browsing.
Tips & Guides — informational content such as guides, tips, techniques, and references.

Categories on the home page provide another way to browse the library.

2. Advanced Search

Open /advanced-search.php or choose Advanced from the search menu.

Advanced Search can combine:

search text;
title, ingredient, or full-text scope;
ingredients that must include;
ingredients that must not include;
category;
cooking method/style;
content type: Recipes, All content, Tips, Guides, Techniques, or References;
source/author;
maximum total time;
minimum effective rating;
Vegetarian / Easily Adapted;
Favorites only, when Favorites are available to your account;
Want to Try only, when Want to Try is available to your account.

Separate multiple ingredient include/exclude terms with commas. Ingredient include/exclude filters search ingredient rows rather than story/notes text.

If a search is too narrow, remove one filter at a time rather than broadening several at once.

3. Recipe and guide pages

A normal recipe page may show:

title, subtitle, description, and image;
yield/servings and timing information;
ingredients and instructions;
notes, extra sections, nutrition, source/attribution, related recipes, audio/video, or variants when present;
rating, Favorite, Want to Try, Made It, Meal Plan, Print, Email, Share/Export, and scaling controls when allowed.

Informational content such as a Guide or Tip uses the same general page layout but does not pretend to be a cookable recipe. Recipe-only controls are omitted where they do not make sense.

4. Scaling recipes

When your account has recipe-scaling permission, use the scale controls on a recipe page to adjust ingredient quantities.

Scaling changes the displayed ingredient amounts; it does not edit the stored recipe. Use judgment with ingredients that do not scale linearly, such as salt, leavening, spices, pan sizes, or cooking time.

5. Favorites

Favorites are a personal saved list.

When Favorites are enabled for your account:

use the heart control on a recipe to add/remove it;
Favorite counts remain visible as site activity;
Advanced Search can be limited to Favorites only.

Favorites are separate from Want to Try and Made It history.

6. Want to Try

Want to Try is for recipes you intend to make later.

When enabled for your account:

use the bookmark-style control on a recipe to add/remove it;
Advanced Search can be limited to Want to Try only.

Use Favorites for recipes you want to keep prominent and Want to Try as a future-cooking queue; the two lists are independent.

7. Ratings

Recipe ratings are available on normal recipe content when the ratings feature is enabled.

The site can also preserve imported/external rating metadata. Search and display use the effective rating available for the recipe rather than requiring all ratings to originate from the same source.

Informational guides/tips do not use Recipe rating behavior merely because they are stored in the same content system.

8. Made It history

Made It records that you cooked a recipe and can keep dated notes about the result.

Key behavior:

Made It history belongs to the individual user.
Entries are private by default.
If your role also has the separate public-publishing permission, an entry can be made visible to other visitors.
Public visibility is optional per entry; having permission does not make all of your history public.

Use Made It for notes such as changes you made, timing observations, or what you would do differently next time.

9. My Kitchen meal planning

Open My Kitchen from the account menu when your role has Meal Planner permission.

The planner uses a Sunday through Saturday week and supports:

multiple recipes on the same day;
planned servings;
adding a recipe directly from its recipe page;
building a shopping list from the planned recipes.

For the detailed planning/shopping behavior, see My Kitchen.

Adding a recipe from its page

Use the Meal Plan control on a normal recipe page, select a day in the current week, and add it. A confirmation appears after the recipe is added.

Informational guides/tips do not appear as meal-plan recipes.

10. Shopping list

The shopping list is generated conservatively from planned recipe ingredients.

Important behavior:

the same recognized ingredient used by multiple planned recipes is combined when it can be combined safely;
recipe totals remain traceable to their source recipes;
package-aware quantities are used where the data supports them;
the list does not invent unsafe unit conversions or package sizes;
manual shopping items remain independent and are not silently merged into recipe-derived items.

Shopping state includes fields such as:

Bought
Recipe Total
On Hand
Buy
Unit
Skip
pantry state

Changes are saved per field. The shopping view is designed for phone use and also has print support.

See My Kitchen for the full aggregation and package-handling rules.

The available actions depend on your permissions and site configuration.

Print

Use Print on a recipe/guide page for the printer-friendly version. The site owner can choose the default paper size.

When sharing is enabled, use the public recipe link rather than copying a transient URL containing navigation/status parameters. Recipe pages now advertise their clean canonical slug URL to search/social clients.

Email

Emailing recipes requires both the feature permission and working outbound-mail configuration by the site owner.

Export

The site supports native and external recipe formats. Export availability depends on your account permission and the content/format involved.

On All Recipes, choose Select Recipes to Export to enter selection mode. Check individual recipes or use Select All, then choose Recipe Site (.zip), MasterCook MXP, or MasterCook MX2. Clear All removes the current selection and Cancel returns to normal browsing. The Recipe Site ZIP contains one independently importable .ddr package for each selected recipe.

For exact supported formats and the import/export model, see Import and Export.

12. Importing recipes

Import controls are shown only to accounts with recipe-import permission.

The central safety rule is:

source
  -> extraction/OCR/format adapter
  -> parsed canonical recipe
  -> duplicate/review
  -> normal Add Recipe editor
  -> explicit Save or Overwrite

Normal single-recipe and external-format imports never autosave; they open the normal editor for review. Recipe Site's own multi-export ZIP is the exception: after the collection is unpacked, all recipes are selected by default and Import Selected performs the chosen native imports in one operation. Existing matches are not overwritten in bulk and stay available for individual review.

Supported acquisition includes pasted text/HTML, URLs, text/HTML/RTF/DOCX, legacy DOC, PDF/scans, image OCR, Native DDR/JSON, Recipe Site multi-export ZIPs, MasterCook, Paprika, Meal-Master, and Recipe Keeper workflows. The Add Recipe file picker can accept several files at once. Large files are split into smaller upload requests automatically so normal use does not require manually working around reverse-proxy upload limits. A Recipe Site multi-export ZIP opens a checklist with all recipes selected, Select All / Clear All, Import Selected, and an optional per-recipe Preview action.

Scanned/OCR imports intentionally show extracted text for correction before parsing. Preserve attribution/source information rather than removing it during cleanup.

See Import and Export for details.

13. Account and appearance

Use the account menu for:

Appearance — choose the available display appearance/accent preferences;
Account — manage your own account details/password;
My Kitchen — when enabled;
administrative links — only when your role and Admin View allow them;
Logout.

Appearance preferences are stored in the browser so the selected theme can be applied immediately on future visits.

14. Keep Awake

The header includes Keep Awake for cooking situations where you do not want the display to sleep.

Browser/device support varies. Treat it as a convenience feature rather than a safety-critical timer or alarm.

15. Public viewing and account access

The site owner controls whether public viewing and account requests are enabled.

If public viewing is enabled, anonymous visitors can use only the functions explicitly allowed to the Guest role. Personal features such as Favorites, Want to Try, Made It, and My Kitchen require an account and the relevant permission.

16. Troubleshooting as a user

A control is missing

The most common cause is role/permission configuration. Ask the site Owner/Admin whether your role includes that feature.

Email does not send

Email is a site-administration function. The Owner should check mail settings and Site Health.

An imported recipe looks wrong

Do not save over a good existing recipe. Return to the import review/editor, correct the extracted text/fields, and save only after the draft is right.

Shopping quantities look unusual

Review planned servings, the ingredient source rows, On Hand values, and units. The system intentionally refuses some combinations/conversions rather than guessing.

The page looks wrong after changing appearance

Reload once. If the problem persists, return to Appearance and select another supported theme/accent.

My Kitchen
Import and Export
First Owner Setup — for the initial site owner
Administrator Guide
Documentation Index

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