Vanilla Cookbook is a self-hosted recipe manager that aims to keep the user experience simple while handling much of the complexity behind the scenes.
It helps users collect, organise, and work with recipes without requiring lots of manual cleanup, and it can turn inconsistent recipe text into a clearer, more usable format. The software also supports recipe importing and web scraping, making it easier to build a personal cookbook from existing online sources.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Converts US volumetric measurements to imperial and metric weight, with support for inline temperature conversion, fractions, and ranges.
- Scales recipe ingredients automatically while preserving the original text format.
- Parses nutrition text into a structured table with per-serving detection and scale-aware values.
- Scrapes recipes from supported websites using a pasted URL or a browser bookmarklet.
- Includes a shopping list plus cooking logs with calendar view, notes, and recook support.
- Supports user authentication, optional OAuth login, and public recipe sharing.
Website: github.com/jt196/vanilla-cookbook
Support:
Developer: jt196
License: GNU General Public License v3.0

Vanilla Cookbook is written in JavaScript. Learn JavaScript with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Web-Based Food and Drink Software | |
|---|---|
| Grocy | ERP beyond your fridge |
| Mealie | Self-hosted recipe manager and meal planner |
| Tandoor Recipes | Self-hosted recipe manager |
| KitchenOwl | Self-hosted grocery list and recipe manager |
| Tamari | Fully-featured recipe manager |
| Bar Assistant | Manage your home bar |
| Recipya | Simple and powerful recipe manager |
| RecipeSage | Recipe keeper, meal planner and shopping list organizer |
| Specifically Clementines | Grocery list app |
| Fork recipes | Manage food recipes with this Python web-based frontend |
| Norish | Self-hosted recipe app |
| What to cook? | Suggests a recipe |
| Vanilla Cookbook | Self-hosted recipe manager |
| ManageMeals | Recipe manager frontend |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
Explore our carefully curated directory of recommended free and open source software, covering every major software category.The directory forms part of our extensive collection of articles for Linux enthusiasts. It includes hundreds of detailed reviews, together with free and open source alternatives to proprietary software from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. LinuxLinks also covers interesting projects worth exploring, Linux-compatible hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Know a useful free and open source Linux application that we haven’t covered? Tell us about it using our submission form. |


Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.