Recipe Programs: Home Cookin Vs. Cookbook Wizard

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of recipe programs available in stores and online. I have tried many of them and found them lacking primarily because of the import/export capabilities and the resizing of servings, or lack thereof.

The one time I bought a recipe program at a store without trying it I was totally dissatisfied. I determined that I would not buy another program unless I tried it and was satisfied. In my search, I downloaded several demo programs and found all but one lacking. Even then, the program I chose was not perfect, but the issue was so minor as to be unmentionable, though I will mention it later.

The two programs I am comparing are Home Cookin 5.5 by Mountain Software and Cookbook Wizard for Windows 2.0 by MicroBlast Software. Home Cookin is the program I chose to purchase. I chose to compare it to Cookbook Wizard because of the "highest rating" claims on the website. I hadn't thought much of those claims when I tried it, but they caught my attention when I decided to compare two recipe programs.

The first issue I have had with every program I tried was the importation of recipes. Cookbook Wizard and Home Cookin were the only two that allowed for comparatively easy importing and exporting. I attempted to import to and export from each program.

Exporting from both was relatively painless, although with the Cookbook Wizard you have many options, the first of which is to Export or to Export to Word. That's fine, but when you choose Export, you then have a choice between Import Ready Format (it doesn't say for what program), Comma Delimited, HTML Format, and Text Format. It even tells you where they were saved. However, unless the consumer is computer-savvy, Comma Delimited and HTML Format may not mean anything, not to mention Text Format.

When exporting from Home Cookin, it offers Home Cookin format (with photos and text only), Meal Master, Mastercook, XML, Recipe Index (Titles Only), as well as saving it to the clipboard. As with the Cookbook Wizard, XML won't mean anything to a non-computer-savvy person. Both the Meal Master and Mastercook formats are .txt files.