Behind Culipedia.com
The core of Culipedia.com is a custom wiki that was developed to work the same way that a professional chef writes recipes.
The key concept is a recipe is made up of ingredients. This might not be groundbreaking news to anyone, but the way this wiki handles these is pretty exciting.
As a professional chef your job is to break recipes down to components which are collectively refered to as your mise en place. This contrasts with the traditional home recipes, where each recipe is an entity of its own.
This wiki creates a web of related recipes;
When you open a recipe it searches the database for each of the ingredients...if it finds a recipe for the ingredient it will show you a link to it. At any point you can either use the ingredient you have on hand (such as mayonnaise) or click on the link, and learn how to make it yourself.
The point here is to learn more about what you are working with...it is this knowledge that will provide the base for your creative development.
Technology
I am deeply indebted to the companies who produced the open source systems this is built on.
This wiki uses the Zend PHP Framework and the Jquery JavaScript library extensively. These platforms make it possible to spend more time playing with food, and less time worrying about making it work. Thanks again!