Delivering Ingredients for Allrecipes by Amazon

A long time cook here. Have tested Allrecipes on Echo where it works well, with some reservations about how well the interface works with serial step recipe use.   Vocally at least.

Amazon works with Allrecipes to let you order ingredients for delivery   by Jacob Kastrenakes 

Amazon’s attempted takeover of the grocery store continues in another small way today as the company begins to integrate with the popular cooking site Allrecipes. According to Engadget, Allrecipes will begin allowing its readers to click a button on popular recipes and have the ingredients for that recipe added to their AmazonFresh cart. They’ll then be able to order the products for same- or next-day delivery.  ... " 

Alexa Epicurious Cooking Skill

Am a avid cook and fan of the Epicurious (EPI) Conde Nast cooking sites.  They have asked me to test their Echo based skill.  Just started that.   Not encyclopedic, like Allrecipes, but a way to do a small set of recipes well.  They call the recipes  'timers', since they are based on cooking times, but have other aspects of the recipe as well.  Would like to see all the featured recipes in the Epicurious site translated into this form.  And the ability to add my own comments as well, even chat with others making the dish.   Also taking it beyond centric to cooking times, to ingredients, spices, ethnicity.   But keep it high quality and very easy to use.  Will continue to post on the examination here.

You invoke the skill by saying:   Alexa, Open Epicurious. 
Then you can say: Alexa how do I cook flank steak?

Here is the skill description:

With the Epicurious kitchen timer, you can ask how long it takes to cook a number of common ingredients, like vegetables, steak, chicken, pork, and fish. Give us a bit more information, like the weight or thickness of your steak, and we'll tell you the basic time and temperature to cook that item, plus preparation instructions and tips. We'll even give you advice on how to tell if it's done! Currently, we have timers for the following items: 

Chicken: chicken leg, chicken thigh, boneless chicken thigh, whole chicken
Pork: pork chops, pork loin, pork tenderloin
Steaks: flank steak, New York strip, porterhouse, ribeye and skirt steak
Seafood: cod, salmon filet, salmon steak, shrimp, swordfish, tilapia 
Vegetables: acorn squash, beets, broccoli, brussels sprouts, butternut squash, carrots, cauliflower, eggplant, mushrooms, parsnips, potatoes, spaghetti squash, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, yellow squash, zucchini.

Have questions or comments? Contact us at rkt@advancemags.com.  .... 

Google Home Follows Conversational Recipes

Following a cooking recipe is a simplified kind of conversation.   The assumed script is something that has been standardized over time. There are ingredient list and quantities,  cooking instructions,  Serving instructions.  Then there are are comments/assumptions on the script.  Potential substitutions, alternative methods, techniques, visuals,  ...  And then there are interactions of various sorts, which depends on how experienced a cook you are.  But it all starts with  a few simple lists.  At the end perhaps some helpful hints, like serving quantities. So this is a good place to start thinking about useful conversations and their context.

Google Home just added a 'skill' for cooking. You can ask it for a recipe via search,  or find one of your via search and send it to the Google Home App.  It interprets it, and then you can start following the recipe. So it really supports recipe browsing.

Amazon Echo has had a similar recipe reciting capability for sometime.  It has a far shorter list of recipes derived from Allrecipes, but those alone are quite complete.  Amazon does not support easy recipe browsing.

In each system you no longer need to load the skill.  Just ask some questions that imply you are interested in cooking recipes.   And off you go.  More details of the experiment below:

Thinking about Business Process as Recipes

Finally got a chance to look in detail at the Allrecipe skill in Amazon's Echo Alexa.  This lets you voice search 60K+ recipes and then have them recited step by step or sent to your device. Works well, but has limitations in ease of use, depending on your context.    We used this-rough cut model of process to frame a method:  What do you need?, what do you do?   A recipe of resources and actions. Useful beyond a to-do list.

Such a method could also be used to store and access steps in a business processes.   Perhaps leading to better standardization of process.  This probably works best in hands-free situations.   Useful for a salesperson in a car, or a repair person stepping through a checklist.   The search for the process step description could add other context sensitive and bot-like information to the interaction,  based on supporting data.

Today we expect to have ready access to online text resources on lap tops or smartphones,  wherever we are.    So the method of using voice interaction has its own limitations.  But can also be seen as another supportive channel to provide knowledge about process.  Leading to better results.

Check out Allrecipes.   How would you modify it to do process?  Someone working on this?  Also on other platforms like phones and Google Home too?   Be glad to talk, contribute.   - Franz Dill

AllRecipes Launches 60K Recipes for Amazon Echo

Allrecipes launches a 60K recipe file skill for the Amazon Echo, and other Alexa driven systems and devices.    Great idea.  Certainly useful for potential hands-free activity of cooking.  I have yet to look at it.

But it brings up some general questions.  Just being hands-free is not enough for a voice driven cognitive system.   When you use recipes its not just about choosing and hearing a recipe.  Its about pausing while you perform a task.   Its also about scanning an ingredients list, considering adaptations, looking at a picture of what its supposed to look like.  None of these necessarily lend themselves to a sound and voice based system, unless the user interface supports typical cooking interactions.   We saw similar issues when planning maintenance type systems using augmented reality.

Will be checking out the Allrecipes Skill system.    And have more to say about the usefulness of the approach.   More on the announcement

( This was at first not available, but now as of 11/26/2016 is launched and working )