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What is the best way to Tag recipes?


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I have SOOOOOO many recipes between web clippings, magazine clippings and typed up ones

I just started using Evernote as my main organizer for all of them but I don't know what is the best way to Tag them

For instance I have Lemon Monkey Bread, would I tag it "Lemon" "Monkey Bread" "Lemon Monkey Bread" is that to many or to few lol

Any tips or tricks would be greatly appreciated :-)

Thank you!

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  • Level 5

In my opinion, just because a recipe offers lemon, I would not tag it with lemon.

Ditto with salt, pepper, etc.

My tags would be used for ingredients that help define the food; and are important to me.

I would use two categories of tags. Type and Ingredient.

Type tags: - breakfast, snack, dinner, desert, etc.

High level Ingredient tags: Chicken, Steak, Rice, Salad, Fish, Bread, etc.

I would not tag very specific unique ingredients. the Shanghai Hairy Crab for example

The Evernote search engine can easily find those types of specialty dishes.

The final decision is yours and you can easily change the parameters a few weeks down the road.

If you are writing a book on cooking, your tags would be considerably different than mine.

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I have SOOOOOO many recipes between web clippings, magazine clippings and typed up ones

I just started using Evernote as my main organizer for all of them but I don't know what is the best way to Tag them

For instance I have Lemon Monkey Bread, would I tag it "Lemon" "Monkey Bread" "Lemon Monkey Bread" is that to many or to few lol

Any tips or tricks would be greatly appreciated :-)

Thank you!

I've used Mastercook for years. It's still my main recipe organizer, although I normally also add the recipes to EN. I tend to use tags (in Mastercook) like breads, quick breads, appetizers, easy, party fare, etc. I think you're over tagging. Why have a tag for "monkey bread" unless you have 50 monkey bread recipes??? Even then, you could isolate them by searching intitle:"monkey bread".

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Thank you both so much :-)

I'll look in to the Mastercook I've never heard of that before

I'll try to generalize my tags more I don't wanna end up with 9,000 tags and even more confused then when I started :lol:

LOL I do have many monkey bread recipes I like to try different kinds or different versions of the same kind till I find one that is perfect but then I take out all the rest

I haven't used the search yet I'll have to start that

:-)

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I don't have much to add, but I would suggest you start small and then break things out as it becomes warranted. In my case I had a huge file of magazine recipes. I began to scan them into Evernote and I now have 1299 notes, some notes have more than one recipe.

But I started with basics like entree, dessert, vegetable, bread, breakfast, appetizer.

I worked by scanning during the day on the fly and then at night I'd open up Evernote and retitle the notes (and in terms of organizing a large scanning project I learned a bunch). As time went on, I started to add additional tags like poultry, cake, etc. Finally towards then end a few key ingredients developed their own tags but they were the exceptions: potatoes, chocolate for instance.

So my suggestion is that if you have a lot to do, don't overly structure this process, instead start with a basic structure and let it grow and fill in as you work.

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I try to use as few tags as possible, simply because I find once you hit so many tags it's hard to track them all. It's like "hmm...where did I save information like this last time".

For recipes, my tags are:

  • Appetizers
  • Baking
  • Beef
  • Breakfast
  • Chicken
  • Desserts
  • Drinks
  • Fish
  • Pasta
  • Pizza
  • Pork
  • Sides

It still needs a little tweaking but it's working for me.

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The way I think of it:

1. Recipes typically contain full lists of ingredients, so a simple keyword search will locate any ingredient, or combination of ingredients, that you are looking for. Therefore, there is little point in using ingredient names in tags.

2. Tags can be used to classify the recipes into groups which may not be "obvious" from the text of the recipe itself. For example, you may have a lot of dessert recipes, but most dessert recipes will not contain the word "dessert", so "dessert" is an ideal candidate for a tag.

Then, if you want to find all recipes containing sugar and cream, for example, you can just type "sugar" and "cream" into the search box. But then you realize that this is pulling up all your Thai curry recipes (palm sugar, coconut cream) when you really only wanted desserts. So you refine your search to "sugar cream tag:desserts". Simple!

Another tag you might want to consider could be "favorite", or some similar rating. Then, you can simply pull up all of your favorite desserts by joining those two tags.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The way I think of it:

1. Recipes typically contain full lists of ingredients, so a simple keyword search will locate any ingredient, or combination of ingredients, that you are looking for. Therefore, there is little point in using ingredient names in tags.

I mostly agree with this point, but there are some ingredients the will need their own tag because they can be used to star in a dish or used in dish with lots of other things. Potatoes are probably the best example of this. I use a potato tag to locate recipes that are a potato dish as opposed to having potatoes in them (like beef stew).

Another tag you might want to consider could be "favorite", or some similar rating. Then, you can simply pull up all of your favorite desserts by joining those two tags.

I think this is a good idea. I use five tags called "1 star," "2 star," etc. The nice thing is these five stars can be used on other things I would rate as well.

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  • Level 5

I think this is a good idea. I use five tags called "1 star," "2 star," etc. The nice thing is these five stars can be used on other things I would rate as well.

And if you want, you can use actual stars as well - in the recipe, the title, or even as Tags

★, ★★, ★★★, ★★★★, ★★★★★

http://www.evernote....15d375b964b2437

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I think this is a good idea. I use five tags called "1 star," "2 star," etc. The nice thing is these five stars can be used on other things I would rate as well.

And if you want, you can use actual stars as well - in the recipe, the title, or even as Tags

★, ★★, ★★★, ★★★★, ★★★★★

http://www.evernote....15d375b964b2437

I'm being dense but how do you get the stars? I should note I am mostly in a Windows mode or Android.

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  • Level 5

I'm being dense but how do you get the stars? I should note I am mostly in a Windows mode or Android.

I just copied and pasted them into my Evernote account for future reference.

Here are some other stars that work in the Evernote Windows tag field.

✡ ★ ☆ ⋆ ✩ ✮ ✯ ✰ ❇ ❈ ❅ ❄ ❆

And some tags for those early morning tasks:

The "Magically Delicious" hearts, moons, stars, and clovers.

♥ ☾ ★ ♣

Éirinn go Brách

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  • 4 months later...

Well I would recommend you start little and then break factors out as it becomes guaranteed. In my situation, I had

a large big file of journal dishes. I started, to check out them into ever note and i now have 899 notices some

notices, have more than one recipe

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