Recipes & cookbooks

What it's about

Cookbooks are collections of recipes – much like task lists, except a recipe can sit in several cookbooks at once. Every household gets four default cookbooks: Starters, Mains, Desserts, Snacks. You can add as many of your own as you like (“Italian”, “Summer”, “Quick for weeknights”).

Why it's here

Your recipe library grows with every week's plan. Eventually you're scrolling past 80 recipes in a flat list just to find “Chicken curry”. Cookbooks are the drawers that stop that happening. And because a recipe often belongs in more than one category (a lasagne is Mains AND Italian), the data model allows multiple memberships – unlike task lists, where a task always belongs to exactly one list.

How it works

On mobile, /rezepte opens a tile overview: “All recipes” at the top (shows the whole library), your cookbooks below it. Tap a cookbook → its own detail page with the recipes it contains. A classic master-detail pattern, the same as task lists.

On desktop, /rezepte shows the split layout straight away: a sidebar on the left with all your cookbooks, the detail area on the right. Clicking in the sidebar switches the filter inline. /rezepte/alle starts you in the full view.

Creating a cookbook: below the cookbook list sits “Create a cookbook” – under the tiles on mobile, at the bottom of the sidebar on desktop. One click opens the dialogue where you enter the name. On mobile, the button at the top of the header also leads to the same dialogue.

Adding or editing a recipe: the recipe dialogue has a multi-select block called “Cookbooks”. Tapping a chip toggles membership on or off – as many cookbooks per recipe as you like. If you're creating a new recipe from within a cookbook, that cookbook is pre-selected automatically.

Search: a search field sits above the recipe list. It filters the display by recipe name – especially handy once your library grows.

Editing a cookbook: on a cookbook's detail page, the title (icon + name) is tappable – a small pencil icon next to it marks that. Clicking it opens the edit dialogue, where you can rename or delete the cookbook. Deleting it removes the memberships; the recipes themselves stay untouched.

Recipe photo: in the recipe dialogue, you can upload a picture directly from your device – a photo or a screenshot; on your phone, the picker also opens the camera. Alternatively, you can enter an external image link below it. If both are set, patchio shows the uploaded picture. It's stored privately in your household's storage.

Reading ingredients from the picture: once you've saved a picture, and the AI categorisation & recipe photos setting is on (Manage → AI), a “Read ingredients from the picture” button appears below the image. Tapping it sends exactly that picture to Claude (Anthropic), which reads the ingredient list from it – only on tap, never automatically on upload. You get the result as a suggestion with checkboxes: untick rows, correct names, quantities and units, then “Apply”. The ingredients land at the bottom of your ingredient list; existing ones stay as they are. Nothing is saved until you press “Save”. If patchio can't find anything, it says so in a short note – enter the ingredients yourself as usual in that case.

Because recipes belong to everyone in the household, any member can trigger the read-out – even for a picture someone else uploaded. So only upload pictures whose content is fine to send to Claude.

“All recipes” is virtual: this tile isn't a database entry, it just shows everything in the household. The default sort is alphabetical; alternatively, “Not cooked for a while” – handy when you're after some variety. Plus “Who's eating” chips that hide recipes someone at the table doesn't like.

In practice

You keep your standard favourites in “Mains”. In summer, you also create “Summer 2026” and move all your barbecue and salad recipes into it – many of them are also in “Mains”, and that's intentional. When the family suddenly fancies Italian, someone clicks “Italian” and sees lasagne, carbonara, bruschetta – everything anyone has tagged with this cookbook over time. For the week's plan, you pick from “Summer 2026”: three clicks and the shopping list is full.

Related topics

• Meal plan
• Shopping list
• Task lists – the same idea, for tasks