Extract a recipe from a link
Paste the URL of a recipe page and I will pull out the ingredients and the method, without the life story.
How it works
The tool reads the page the way a search engine does, then pulls out only the recipe: the title, the servings, the times, the ingredients and the method. Everything else on the page is discarded.
Because the reading happens outside your browser, it works on sites that would normally block a cross-origin request. It also means it reads the page as it is published, so a page that changes its recipe will return the new version.
What works and what does not
| Page type | Result | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Standard recipe blog | Works well | The recipe is in the page content and marked up |
| News site recipe | Works well | Usually clean and complete |
| Recipe behind a login | Fails | The tool cannot sign in as you |
| Hard paywall | Fails | The recipe text is not in the published page |
| Video-only recipe | Partial at best | No written method to read |
| Social media post | Partial | Captions are often incomplete |
| Aggregator or roundup page | Varies | It may return one recipe or a list of links |
Why paywalled pages fail, and why that is fine
If a recipe is genuinely behind a subscription, the tool will not get it, and it will tell you so rather than inventing something that looks similar. That last part matters. An invented recipe is worse than no recipe, because you will cook it and waste the ingredients.
When it fails, it says why: a login, a paywall, or a page that simply is not a recipe. Then you know whether it is worth trying a different source.
The awkward truth about recipe blogs
The long preamble is not there by accident. Recipe sites put it there because it helps them rank in search, and it does work. The recipes at the top of search results are frequently the ones with the most words above the ingredients.
That is not going to change. The workaround is to stop reading the page and start extracting from it, which is exactly what this does.
Making the result actually usable
- Check the quantities before you shop. Extraction reads what is written, and occasionally a page has a typo in it.
- Copy the result into wherever you keep recipes, so you do not have to find the page again.
- If a page returns a partial recipe, try the print view or the AMP version of the same URL. Both strip the surrounding clutter.
- If you cook from the page regularly, save it once rather than extracting it every time.
- If a page fails entirely, check the link. Recipe URLs get moved and archived constantly.
I have a genuine grudge against recipe websites. I once scrolled through eleven hundred words about a trip to Tuscany to find out how long to roast a chicken. There was a video playing over the top of it the whole time.
The recipe was four lines long. It was buried under a photo essay.
Pasting the link into this tool gets you the four lines and nothing else. It is the single most satisfying thing I have built.
Frequently Asked Questions
Paste the URL into the tool above. It reads the page and returns only the title, ingredients and method, discarding the article, the video and the adverts around it.