Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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98 of 102 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best recipe management software out there!, February 17, 2005
I have used Master Cook for many years now, and I am very impressed with it's capabilities. I mainly use it for managing and nutritionally analyzing my own recipes, but the recipes that come with the program are also useful, and easy to customize to your own needs. There are many yahoo (and other) groups dedicated to sharing Master Cook recipes in a format that is very easy to download, and the recipe import feature makes it easy to copy and paste recipes in text format (or from websites - including pictures!) in just a few seconds. It can take a while to type in a lot of recipes from books, or initially typing in your collection if you choose to do it all at once, but I think it is worth the effort. I have tried a variety of other recipe software programs (Cook'n, ChefTec - EXPENSIVE, Meal Master, Instant Home Cooking, CookWare, among a few!) and I have found Master Cook to be by far the best value with the most customization abilities, ease of use, and user-friendliness.
Master Cook also has the capability to keep track of your pantry, create shopping lists, plan your menus, search for recipes based on very specific criteria (ingredients to avoid or include, single nutritional items, your personal rating or category, time to make, cost - if you use the shopping section, etc., and combinations of any of these things).
One thing that I don't like about Master Cook are that it *doesn't* include SUGAR or TRANS FATS in the nutritional information (or a custom nutrition capability - that would be handy for calculating weight watchers points!) I contacted ValuSoft about the possibility of adding these and was told that they do *not* expect to add these in the near future. I was disappointed by this because I think that sugar and trans fat are pretty basic items to nutrition - I hope they reconsider!
Overall, I highly recommend this product if you are interested in maintaining and sharing recipes and/or having control over your nutrition. I have enjoyed the ability to modify recipes so that they are healthier for me and my family, and have given this software (and my recipes/cookbooks from it!) to several family members as gifts.
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45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A treasury of information, February 14, 2005
It's true there are not many pictures, but this software wasn't meant to be eye candy. It was created for functionality and to fill a void in the software market. The program has been around for years, and each edition keeps getting better. In version 8.0, MasterCook includes literally thousands upon thousands of recipes compiled from various cookbooks and textbooks used in home cooking as well as the hospitality industry (such as Food for Fifty, On Cooking, etc). I've found delicious and sometimes difficult to find recipes for petits fours, casseroles, and breads. There are even separate sections for "low carb" and vegetarian recipes. I honestly haven't prepared many of the recipes, but I don't think that could be accomplished in my lifetime!
Each recipe can be customized by adding your own notes, ingredients or modifications on the original recipe. You can choose recipes to compose an entire meal and print out a grocery list of all the ingredients required to make that meal. It makes meal planning on a daily or weekly basis a snap (if you have the time to invest). It also has chapters on preparation methods and definitions of terms used in cooking.
The best part is the nutritional analysis, my main reason for buying this software package. You can enter a recipe from your own archives and receive a fully detailed nutritional analysis of the dish. Despite its overly-complicated interface, it is chocked full of information and retails at an affordable price. This is a fantastic organizational tool for a computer-savvy foodie, a nutritionist, or even a chef. I recommend this software as one of the best recipe organizers and cookbooks available for your PC.
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37 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good as a cookbook, not as a recipe organizer, June 7, 2005
I purchased the MasterCook 8 software in part because of the great reviews it received and its PDA
support, but it isn't quite as good for me as it seems to be for most others. The overall design is
very nice, and it looks better than any other cookbook program that I've tried, and the recipes
look delicious. Unfortunately, it's not the program to use if you have a lot of recipes to import.
I've tried importing Meal-Master recipes, plain text recipes and even recipes exported then
reimported by MasterCook 8, but even though the recipes get imported all of the categories
disappear! Not only that, but there doesn't seem to be a standard set of categories for new
cookbooks -- you have to make your own category template. Another big issue for me is eliminating
duplicate recipes; MasterCook 8 checks for duplicates when you first import recipes, but there's no
way to simply check for duplicates in a current cookbook.
All in all, if you don't have many recipes of your own and you aren't inclined to download
thousands of new ones from the Internet the way I did then this is a good program. If, however, you
have a large collection of recipes or want to build one, this is not the best program with which to
organize them. I switched to AccuChef, which isn't as polished in some ways, but its much better at
organizing my recipes.
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