Meal Helper is a recipe database application in which a user is able to store various ingredients in his or her physical pantry into the application. After doing so, the application will display the recipes that can be made with only the ingredients in the pantry, unless the user specifies to include recipes with up to a certain number of unowned ingredients.
Meal Helper is designed with ease-of-use in mind. The pantry is persistent, and will remain stored in the phone’s memory (even through reboots and application exits), unless the user deletes a specific ingredient. The recipe feature is based on the ingredients included in the user’s pantry. Upon selecting a type of recipe to search for, Meal Helper will display only the courses that can be made with the user’s ingredients.
Meal Helper includes a “surprise me” feature, which will choose a random recipe based on the time of day. Upon viewing a recipe, the user can mark that recipe as a favorite, and can quickly access it through a favorites menu. Furthermore, the user may indicate a kosher, vegan, vegetarian, and/or gluten-free recipe search.
Source: University of Tennessee
Authors: Jacob Taylor Peek | David Prenshaw | Matthew Burnett | Ian Harmon