One of the first
things I remember from my 4-H cooking class was learning the difference
between a 'T' and a 't' when you read or wrote down a recipe. The
difference in case could mean a successful recipe or a total disaster.
A lot of experienced cooks start with a recipe and add or remove or
replace ingredients as they are inspired to do, so an accurate detailed
recipe isn't often required. The same isn't true of baking. Some
experienced bakers know enough about the science of baking to know
proportions and required ingredients, but for many, exact amounts and
detailed instructions are necessary.
When I started this blog, I expanded my Twitter followings to a lot of food related tweets. I did a search for cooking, food, recipes and randomly followed a bunch of people. I found others to follow based on tweets in my feed. Some of the more intriguing posts came from @cookbook (definitely a Twitter name that many, many people/companies wish they'd gotten first...) who tweets recipes in a severely abbreviated form. For example, here's a recipe that was posted on June 10th:
I was on the fence about this at first. I love the fact that Twitter has inspired a concise way of writing. For some writers, this means normal grammar and rules, but choosing your words very carefully. For others, it means creating a new grammar and language that uses abbreviations and short cuts in similar to texting. For general thoughts, opinions, feelings, references to more detailed information, this new form of grammar is fine. But for any type of information where details are important, Twitter fails. From a usability point of view, recipes on Twitter fail miserably.
Take the example above. If I reference the glossary "Mix8T
milk&sug/c flour/t bkgpdr&vanil/5T
mltbutter/egg" I think means 8 tablespoons of milk and 8 tablespoons of
sugar. But how much flour and baking powder and vanilla? According to
the glossary,
"/" means "and another amount." But what that other amount is isn't
clear. But beyond the amounts and ingredients, this recipe has no
context for me. I assume from the list of ingredients (milk, sugar,
flour, vanilla, egg, fruit) that it is some sort of cake. But what
kind of cake? I have to Google "Apricot Platz" to find out that it's a
coffee-type cake with fruit on top. What sort of pan do I use? How
long do I bake it? What is it going to look like in the end? I need a
lot more information that simply cannot be conveyed in 140 characters.
The other usability issue I have with this format is a lack of scan-ability. I think it is important to be able to scan through a recipe and either mentally or physically note that you have the required ingredients, the right tools, the amount of time necessary to prepare it. Twitter recipes require an extra level of translation that makes them more complicated and easier to make mistakes. Recipes on Twitter are the opposite of what a real recipe offers, where
context, photos and details inspire and instruct.
I would have much less of an issue with recipes on Twitter if there was a link to a more detailed recipe. I would be happy to get a new Twitter recipe every day from multiple sources (Martha Stewart has started tweeting recipes as well) that provided a quick link to the detailed recipe. This to me is the power of Twitter: a one to many relationship that allows people to easily publish content and create their own feeds of content based on keywords and that is influenced by what other people are reading, re-tweeting and saying.
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