Web smarts

January 17, 2001

www.cookbookwizard.com

What: Cookbook Wizard is a convenient way to share, organize, and search online recipes.

BEST POINTS: The site offers some 25,000 free recipes, classified by ingredient, cuisine, occasion, and amount of work. Visitors to the site, who must first register, can easily learn to cook Mediterranean Chicken Kebabs, New England Cranberry Sauce, Salmon Sushi, as well as Scottish Scones. Recipes may then be added to their online cookbook.

Cooks can choose to keep their own collection of recipes private or share them. They can also request advice or extra recipes through a message board, and use the cooking glossary.

WHat you need to know: Users need to download software to track and organize large numbers of recipes. The shareware program is free to try, $17.95 if you decided to keep it.

Though the site could be more visually appealing and sophisticated, it provides a large amount of information. It would be more useful to beginning cooks with oversight from a chef or food editor, making it more informative and efficient.