Searching Hints

You can use this search function to search for recipes that include specific ingredients or methods or that were contributed by specific individual(s). Boolean AND and OR searches are permitted (unfortunately, NOT searches do not work correctly). Also, you may include the wildcard "*" at the end of a word (e.g. "chil*" will match "chili", "chile", "chilis", "children", etc). Without the "*" character at the end of the your search word, you will only match exact whole words (e.g. "chil" will NOT match "chili", "chile", "chilis", or "children". It will only match "chil" which probably doesn't appear in any of the recipes (except as a typo))

To search, enter your search word(s) into the text box on your browser or type "s" if you are using lynx and enter your word(s) when prompted. You have the same search options as you doing using the assisted search form -- the search form makes it easier to restrict recipes to vegan, nearly vegan, ovo, or lacto categories. You can read the About Restrictions document to learn more about how these categories are encoded.

Search examples

artichokes: This will search for recipes containing the word "artichokes" anywhere in the recipe -- not just the ingredients list. If the recipe contains the word "artichoke" but not "artichokes" it will not match.
artichoke*: This will find recipes with words that begin with "artichoke". It will match both "artichoke" and "artichokes" but not "artichoks".
apples and honey: This will find recipes that contain BOTH the word "apples" and the word "honey" in the same recipe.
bulgar or bulger or bulghar or bulghur or bulgur: This will find recipes that contain at least one of the words "bulgar", "bulger", "bulghar", "bulghur", or "bulgur". You can put "or" between common spellings and mispellings of a word to help find more recipes that might match. In this case, the search "bulg*" would also have worked well, though it would also pick up "bulgarian".
artemis or (michelle and dick): Most of the recipes contain a From: line listing the contributer by email address and/or name. My name is Michelle Dick, and my username is usually artemis. This search will find all recipes that contain the word "artemis" or that contain both the word "michelle" and "dick". Thus it will match recipes that I am likely to have contributed.
(crockpot or (crock and pot)) and beans: This will find recipes that are likely to include directions for cooking beans in a crockpot.
mastercook or meal-master: This will find recipes that are in either MasterCook or Meal-Master format. (recipe database programs).
(mastercook or meal-master) and kwvegan: This will find all recipes that are in MasterCook or Meal-Master format and that are vegan.
kwvegan or kwhoney: This will find all recipes that are vegan or nearly vegan.

Comments

All searches are case insensitive. "tvp" will match "tvp", "TVP", "tVp", etc. There is no way to do a case sensitive search.

If there were no recipes listed on the results page, that means there were no matching recipes.

The wildcard "*" only works at the end of a word, not the beginning or middle.

As mentioned previously, "NOT" searches do not work correctly at this time.

You cannot search for numbers (i.e. you cannot search for "May and 1994" to try to find recipes that were posted in may 1994.

Most ingredients are written in the plural, you may want to keep this in mind (the search "apples" will generally be more successful than the search "apple".

A recipe will be considered a match if it contains the search word anywhere in the text, not just if it is an ingredient.