AllRecipes (AR) is one of the top recipe sources on the Internet. And it’s been around just about since the beginning – 1997! To celebrate it’s upcoming 30th anniversary, the site recently revealed – and shared – AllRecipes’ Top 6 most beloved recipes…
It all started back before the Millennium… When a couple of University of Washington stud-ents were looking – unsuccess-fully – for a cookie recipe. And their search attempts stumped even the mighty WWWeb. Such as it was back then.
Out of frustration, they partner-ed with some other, like-minded students, to launch Cookierecipe .com. And the rest, as they say, is history…
Wikipedia tells us… “Allrecipes .com, Inc. is a food-focused on-line social networking service headquartered in Seattle, Wash-ington. The company was found-ed by University of Washington archaeology students Tim Hunt, Carl Lipo, Mark Madsen, Michael Pfeffer, David Quinn, and Dan Shepherd.”
The hard way…
But they arrived at the ‘AllRecipes’ identity the hard way.
“Allrecipes.com was founded in 1997 after Hunt and Shepherd had trouble finding a cookie recipe on the Internet. The recipe sharing and cooking community website began as [part] of one of Seattle’s first web companies, Emergent Media. The company’s original website was CookieRecipe.com. After Cookierecipe, came Cakerecipe.com, Chickenrecipe.com, Pierecipe.com, Beefrecipe.com. After launch-ing 38 different domains, the company consolidated all its websites into Allrecipes.com.”
From those humble beginnings…
… Has grown an audience of more than 11 million followers, and a library of more than 55,000 recipes anybody can access.
And in 2013, they launched AllRecipes magazine, bucking the publishing mega-trend at that time of print mags going online-only.
The ‘Best of the Best’…
Allrecipes’ most recent bi-monthly paper edition featured a rundown of the organization’s all-time Top 100 favourite recipes as both a celebration and a retrospective. AR staff were asked to choose their favourites – and the result was pretty much in line with the official Top 100!
Drum roll, please…
In no particular order, here they are…
… In all their glory! And all legendary classics – with the possible exception, in some readers’ minds, of the cake… Although, if you’ve tried it, I think you’ll agree that it’s definitely ‘classic’ material!
My take
Note, if you will, that 5 of the 6 ‘Best of the Best’ selections are outstanding examples of old, stand-ard favourites. Ribs, Rice Crispies Treats and French toast never get old. And didn’t I tell you, just a few months back, that Fondue – both the food and the tradition – were making a comeback?
~ Maggie J.