The UI itself is fairly basic, is split into five sections and is quite reminiscent of the iPhone’s AppStore.app. First, you have the downloads section. This is where new cookbooks will appear as they are submitted, this allows you to only download the “cookbooks” that you want.

The third section is a favorites section. You can add recipes to you favorites for easy reference at a later time.

Fourth, is a the Search section. This is self explanatory…

Lastly, the fifth section is an explanation about the app & how to submit your recipes as well as some Conversion charts, in case you need to know how many milliliters are in 1/4 cup…

I was quite surprised by the quality of each recipe – written & photographed (might I add, the “Chestnuts soup with turnip tops” recipe from Irene binaghi, is mighty good.)

Some of the issues I encountered: I had the app crash when reloading the download page. This only happened to me twice ant was sporadic. In cookbooks, when displaying the list of recipes, a thumbnail photo is visible; however, in viewing the recipe by itself, the photo did not show up (this only occurred in some of them).

Overall this is a really neat concept. Some of the main things that I felt were missing from the app – a lack of check boxes to know which ingredients you have added or what step you are on. I’d really like to see this implemented. Another thing that would be really cool to see, would be a global rating system that users vote by only within the app.

Pros:
-Picture with every Spice or Herb
-Alternative names listed with each herb/spice
-Full description and uses of herb/spice.

Cons:
-List text can sometimes be hard to read due to background image.
-No search
-No start-from-top (explained above)

Herbs and spices is a simple database application. The application explains a multitude of spices – what they are, their history, a picture and other international names. I find this app versatile for anyone that cooks or is wandering what the heck Borage is.

Interface:
The interface is relatively simple. The names of the spices are listed next to mini pictures of those correlating spices. By tapping on one of them you will see an enlarged picture of the spice and all it’s information

While the database contains several herbs/spices, I quickly found that it wasn’t as complex as I previously perceived. It has a mixture of 66 spice & herbs and within each item, it has other correlating names it may go by. I realized that some of the spices that I was looking for were found in the “other names” information paragraph under one of the ingredients. It would be nice to include these in the list as well or add a search to the app that would search this field.

Issues:
The only problems I had with this application had to do with the interface. The initial screen that lists the spices/herbs – while the background picture might add to the user’s experience, here it is a little distracting and it is sometimes hard to read the names in contrast with the background.

The second thing is – if you scroll down the page in the details screen, then exit back to the list, and again go to a different spice/herb, you will find that the details screen is in the same place as you left it before. Meaning it does not automatically begin at the top of the screen (view video to see this).

Overall:
I think this is a good initial start for this application, however, there are still a few things that need to be ironed out – background image needs to lightened or different; automatic scroll-to-top needs to be done and a search-able names database would be very nice to have. I hope to see more spices & herbs added to the database.

Pros:
-Unique & well-executed Interface
-Ingredient Checklist
-Numerous Photos in Directions
-Favorites List

Cons:
-Only Vegan Recipes
-No way to edit recipes

4.7/5

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