Organise recipes with Gourmet

Gourmet is a flexible recipe program for Ubuntu that can create shopping lists and has some powerful search tools.

Installation is best done through the Software Centre. Click on the Software Centre icon in the Launcher and click in the search box at the top right of its window. Type Gourmet and press enter. Click on the Install button and enter your password when prompted. Ubuntu will download and install the lastest version. This also means that updates will be included in the normal System Updates.

As Gourmet is included in the Software Centre in Ubuntu, the download link is for the Windows version. Sadly the installation is not quite as simple as the GTK+ for Windows Runtime Environment must be installed first. Click here to download. Click here to download this now.

The interface is plain but in a good way; it's a database for recipes and what's more important is that it displays information well and is generally easy to use.

Creating a new recipe is easy: either press Ctrl and N or click on New in the File menu. Recipes have four tabs to fill out: Description, Ingredients, Instructions and Notes.

Once recipes have been created, double-clicking on them opens the view window rather than the edit. To edit you have to right click and then select Edit recipe. Strangely there is no keyboard shortcut to edit recipices.

Recipes can be categories that helps keep them organised. There is no obvious way to edit the categories. If you want to add a new category, just type in the box rather than select an option from the drop down menu. Custom categories will disappear from the list if there are no recipes assigned to them.

Gourmet can import recipes that are in the mealmaster or mastercook format. Some websites support direct imports. If this is the case, Gourmet will ask you which image you want to use in the recipe.

The pantry list is designed to store all the ingredients that can be assumed to be in the kitchen such as spices or the basics including flour and sugar. This helps keep the shopping list manageable. It is posible to move items from the pantry list into the shopping list if you know that you are about to run out.

Gourmet can calculate nutritional information about dishes using a plugin that must be enabled. With the main window active, click on the Settings menu and then Plugins.

Recipes can be printed in a variety of styles including index cards and columns.

Although the Windows version is intended to be identical to the Linux version some features haven't been included yet. These include printing and PDF export and spell checking.