Connoisseur: Measuring Cup With Kick
I love to cook; I also love to have my MacBook in the kitchen with me when I’m cooking. I have a bunch of recipes bookmarked on del.icio.us and I usually just prop my MacBook up on a chair while I cook.
Unfortunately, I hate going back and forth between what I’m doing and my laptop, because I’m afraid I’ll spill something on it. Recently Doc Logic here at MacApper covered Measuring Cup, a free recipe manager for OS X.
I tried it out as an alternative to digging through my del.icio.us links and it was pretty good, but I thought I could find something that better suited my needs. I did. It’s called Connoisseur by The Little App Factory. Connoisseur is a recipe manager for OS X that truly blew me away.
Not only does it come with a decently-sized library of recipes built in, but it has a whole slew of features that were exactly what I was craving. Like other recipe managers, creating, editing, and reading individual recipes is easy and intuitive. A click of a button brings up a small window with four panes: details, ingredients, directions, and notes. Under details you can give each recipe a name and subtitle, file it under different styles of cuisine (Chinese, Italian, etc), as well as a particular course (afternoon tea, lunch, snacks, dinner, etc.).
Preparation and cooking time are separate fields which is great if you want to prepare the ingredients ahead of time and cook later. Adding ingredients or directions is as simple as hitting plus and filling in the fields given. Connoisseur offers you the ability to add a note to any ingredient you list as well, just in case you need some extra information. Finally under the last pane you can input a description of your recipe as well as list the source.
There are a few features that specifically sold me though. For one, you can import recipes from webpages by copying text to your clipboard. Ingredients, steps and even the description are automatically entered into Connoisseur’s recipe templates easily in Metric or Imperial. There’s no need to input individual measurements or ingredients– just paste the entire recipe into a small window and Connoisseur creates the entry. You can also copy and paste a picture of the recipe directly into the details pane.
The second feature to absolutely sell me on Connoisseur was the Shopping List. If you’re planning to make something, click the recipe name and hit “Add To Shopping List”. The ingredients are automatically exported to any attached iPod. You can check the ingredients list through the Notes section of your iPod under Extras. You can also easily print your shopping list.
What if you’re having extra people over and you’re not brilliant at math? Inside the recipe details pane you can scale a recipe using a simple slide-mechanism. The measurements of your ingredients are automatically adjusted. Lastly, by clicking the “Cooking View” icon at the top of the window, Connoisseur opens a full-screen view of your recipe and will even read it to you step-by-step with the click of a button. No more flour-covered fingers messing up your keyboard, and no risk of ruining your Mac through a spillage disaster.
Connoisseur 1.2 runs on OS X 10.3+, including Tiger, though the website doesn’t specifically say it works on Leopard. The free trial version runs fully-featured for 20 sessions before requiring a $20 license. If Measuring Cup isn’t quite up to the task and you’re willing to pay the $20, I’d definitely give Connoisseur a shot.
Great app! Wouldn’t it be great to have an open recipe document format – so that everybody can share recipes – well, perhaps I am too geeky
Under no circumstance should you give these people your money. My mom bought this app last year and when she upgraded to Leopard Connisseur broke. That’s not the bad part. I sent at least an email per week for 2 months to support trying to get a fix but never got a reply. I finally tracked down someone who used to work for TLAF but he was in Pakistan for the year and couldn’t really help.
I don’t think anyone is actively developing anymore at TLAF and there sure as heck isn’t anyone providing tech support.
They’ll sell you the app for sure. Just don’t count on getting any support. Ever.
My mom and I both switched to YummySoup and we’re both very happy.
Joe’s comments has me worried. Can you guys do a review of YummySoup to complete the showdown? The web importing feature is huge …
Lee,
YummySoup’s web import works superbly. Just drag and drop the recipe URL (from these websites: AllRecipes.com, Deliaonline.com, Epicurious.com, FoodNetwork.com, MarthaStewart.com & RachaelRayMag.com.) to YummySoup and YS automatically imports everything for the recipe and puts it all in the right places. If you want to import from a site thats not in the supported list (the developer is constantly adding new sites), the AnySite Importer works very well.
It’s a nice program and I highly recommend it.
Joe, you had me at “allrecipes.com” … Thanks!
when i used measuring cup, i loved it. i took the time to input 30 recipes. then pressed save.
when i did that, it automatically shut off.
then when i reopened it, everything was gone.
every time i quit or save, everything is erased
did anyone else have that problem?
is it for leopard(i have tiger still)?
or am i just doing it wrong?
I agree with Joe and you should not buy this product. I bought it a couple of years ago and it abruptly stopped saving recipes, wasting hours of my time inputting recipes. I emailed support and they assured me the next revision would be available within the week. That was almost two years ago now and they have not responded to my many emails since. I have yet to find a good solution (especially one that will take my connoisseur data). I was hoping the Cookbook app would be available (http://mydreamapp.com/) but the last update on info was July. I would love to hear what other people are using
In response to the comments: I’m looking at YummySoup now. I also e-mailed the people at Little App Factory but got no reply. Thanks for the heads up!
I bought Connoisseur a couple years ago. Wish I hadn’t. It’s not been updated in forever, and recipe entry is stilted and awkward. Looks good, but looks aren’t everything.
It would seem that this app is quite out of date and possibly no longer supported. What about reviewing something like MacGourmet (which is still under active development as of January 29, 2008)? How does MacGourmet compare to YummySoup? I would be very interested to read that article.
[...] back, I reviewed Connoisseur as a more fully-featured alternative to Measuring Cup for organizing and using recipes on your Mac. [...]
I recommend shop n cook menu
http://www.shopncook.com/
agree with Joe, do NOT buy this app. i had the same experience. try either MacGourmet (which i’m using now and love) or YummySoup!
Do not buy anything Connoisseur – it broke when I upgraded to OS 10.5, emailed Thelittleapp factory for weeks – never got a reply. I’ve lost all the time I spent importing my recipes unless I want to export 2400 recipes one at a time.
Has anyone found an app that will import the .recipe files from connoisseur?
I’ve not done it myself but YummySoup has an “open import file>Connoisseur Recipe File” option. Download YS and give the demo a try:
http://hungryseacow.com/HungrySeacow/YummySoup%21_-_recipe_management_at_its_best%21.html
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