For this assignment, I looked up recipes for a spicy vodka sauce pasta, which is also known as the Gigi Hadid pasta on social media. There were many websites with this recipe. The three websites I chose to look at were called Moribyan https://moribyan.com/gigi-hadid-pasta/, Jawns I Cooked https://jawnsicooked.com/dinner/spicy-vodka-pasta/, and Cuisine and Cocktails https://www.cuisineandcocktails.com/gigi-hadid-pasta/.
For the first website, I was able to find all of the common elements of a recipe on this page, and she provided great detail. The layout of the website was typical towards the top of the page. It started with the title, a brief description, and a photo of the finished product. This layout was pretty standard and the elements were where and how I was expecting them to be. The only thing that felt unusual to me was there was no step by step instruction under each picture. Other than that, the layout of the elements were typical and the ingredient list, prep/cook time, and numbered instructions were in an area that comes after the images of the recipe towards the bottom of the page. The reviews were the very last element on this website. When I reached the second website, I did not like it at all. There were so many pictures that were also way too oversized. She had instructions under each picture, which the first website did not. I feel like this is a more typical approach to an online recipe, so I thought that was a good element they had. The bottom of the page had the same elements together as the first website like the ingredients, numbered instructions, etc.
The third and final website was the most aesthetically pleasing and the easiest to comprehend. The top of the page had the title, a brief description. There were a lot of images like the second recipe, but these were not too big and didn’t take up the whole page. The biggest difference between this recipe and the first two is that the ingredient list is before the picture instructions. They also had a FAQ section and nutritional facts, which the other two did not. The rest of their website was similar to the others with the ingredients, numbered directions, and cook/prep time all in one box together.
I think the second recipe stands out for bad layout. Like I said before, there was so many large images, too much text that didn’t really add anything to the recipe and more just talked about Gigi Hadid. I’m not sure if the website owner is responsible for this, but there were also a lot I think that the third recipe has a good layout. Everything’s aligned together on the left hand side of the page, there isn’t any text that’s too hard to read, and the images are just the right size, in my opinion. I think the top five most important elements of a recipe layout are estimated prep time and cook time, list of ingredients, numbered steps, estimated servings and quantity of intems, and lastly, at least one image of the final dish.
I never took much thought into recipe layouts until this assignment, and after analyzing the structure of the recipe, I realized just how how important it is in relation to how someone will feel while trying to follow it. The more frustrating your layout is, the more frustrated someone will be while cooking simply because of your organization. Overall, I think that https://www.cuisineandcocktails.com/gigi-hadid-pasta/ had the best layout and would feel confident in learning from this page.