Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking
I&#x27;ve done a few quizzes on the app now, and I don&#x27;t get it. The questions feel very contrived, like someone had a quota to fill so just put whatever looked plausible together. They are also _very_ culturally specific.<p>Questions about eggs barely made sense to me being from the UK, with incorrect pack sizes, animal welfare terms, and completely missed our great standards body that makes it easy to know which eggs have met a reasonable quality bar. It&#x27;s not that the info is globally applicable, it&#x27;s that it&#x27;s an awkward combination of wrong and useless depending on where you live. Starting another quiz about kitchen equipment it seems this is a pattern throughout.<p>Cooking is deeply embedded into culture, tradition, region, climate, regulatory environment, retail infrastructure, and more. I don&#x27;t think these quizzes will be able to overcome this without being fully localised per country.<p>The recipes? Maybe they&#x27;re better. I don&#x27;t know, I&#x27;m still 7 levels away from being able to know how to make scrambled eggs.<p>Edit: when I opened the app the first time it asked me how experienced I am and I answered the 3rd out of 4 options, I know my way around a kitchen. The app just asked me to match pictures of eggs to how they have been cooked: fried, scrambled, etc. I&#x27;m not sure I can survive this level of patronisation, it&#x27;s honestly a bit insulting.<p>Edit: &quot;what sort of pan should you cook eggs in&quot;... &quot;no not a wok, people don&#x27;t have those at home&quot;. Ouch. At best that&#x27;s incredibly sheltered for a food writer, and at worst it&#x27;s practically racist.