You have a few ingredients you want to use for dinner, but you’re out of others. What to make? A new social search engine geared toward recipes wants to help you find out.
The new site is called Foodily. A user types in the ingredients desired, as well as any ingredients to avoid, and the search results show recipes in a side-by-side comparison. Recipes can be collected into a menu, shared along with tips and opinions among friends, and invitations to the meal can be sent out. A Facebook event with a menu can also be created so invitees can comment, share and work together.
Eating with Your Social Network
The San Mateo, Calif.-based company, founded by two former Yahoo employees and staffed by a dozen employees, said on its corporate blog that Foodily is the first tool to bring a social experience to online recipes. “This is the way we really make decisions about what we eat,” the company said, “with the advice and ideas of those in our social network.”
The company raised $5 million in venture capital last year from Index Ventures, following seed money from Flipboard CEO and former TellMe executive Mike McCue.
The site aggregates millions of recipes found on the web, in contrast to the collection on recipe sites that typically number in the tens of thousands. The sources of recipes from other sites and blogs are shown in the search results.
By allowing a user to find recipes that employ some ingredients but not others, the site accommodates the condition of real-world kitchens, where the cook might be out of a certain spice but have plenty of an ingredient purchased on sale.
As with many sites these days, Foodily is deeply integrated with Facebook. You can see the favorite recipes of friends, indicate if you like them, and set…