Jar & Kettle A recipe app for iPhone

Recipes

All 58 recipes are listed by chapter, and each chapter has a short note under its heading. Every recipe has a painted picture, in gouache and watercolour, in an American farmhouse look. A small close-up sits beside the recipe in the list, and the whole picture opens its page. Each row in the list also shows the recipe's number, how long it takes and how long it keeps.

A dot on the corner of each picture says whether you have what the recipe needs: full for everything, half for some, an empty ring for none yet. The app works it out from what is in your Pantry. On the recipe page, a line under "Ingredients" names anything that is "Still to get".

Tap the heart on a recipe page to make it a favorite. A small heart then shows on its row, in its own chapter, and the heart beside the search box shows only your favorites, still under their chapter headings.

You can search by a recipe's name or by its ingredients. Type "honey ginger" and you see the recipes that use both. The search looks inside words too, so "nut" finds walnuts. It also finds an ingredient that arrives inside another recipe: the quinoa bowl uses the roast vegetables, so it comes up for broccoli. Type a number, "recipe 15" or "No. 08", and you get that recipe.

A filter shows only the recipes you can make with the shopping lists you have bought.

Each recipe page starts with its picture, how much it makes, how long it takes and how long it keeps. That last line reads "Best within" and a time for many recipes, and "Use within" for cooked food and herb oil. Things you make and use the same day say "Best: Fresh, the same day", and a few say "Keeps: For years".

Every recipe page has a Take care box above the ingredients. It holds the recipe's cautions, if it has any, then the line "If you have a reaction, stop and get help." with what to do, and a row, "How to check for a reaction first", that opens the app's guide.

Then come the ingredients, which you can tick off as you gather them, the method, and how to store it. Storage is shown as rows: where to keep it and for how long, and often what to keep it in.

Pantry

When you make a recipe, tap "I made this today" on its page. The Pantry saves it and works out its dates. For recipes that ferment or steep, it shows the day they will be ready. Where a recipe can be frozen, a second button, "I made this and froze it", saves the batch with the freezer's date instead.

There are two kinds of date. Most things get "Best by" and a date, which is a general guide to quality, not a guarantee. Fifteen recipes get "Throw away after" and a date instead: the soups and broths, the cooked meals, hummus, the herb vinaigrette and herb oil. Looking and smelling cannot tell you those are still fine. A batch you froze always gets "Best by", because freezer times are guides to quality.

The Pantry never calls anything good or safe. An entry gets a label only when it needs a look. With a best-by date that is Use soon, then Past best-by. With a throw-away date it is Use soon, then Last day on the day itself, then Throw it away. Something still fermenting or steeping says Not ready yet. The line at the top of the Pantry names the most pressing thing first, and a throw-away date that is coming up comes before a best-by date that has passed.

Recipes you make and use the same day cannot be added to the Pantry: they do not keep, so there is nothing to track. A few recipes that keep for years are saved without a date. Things you tick in the Shop tab show up under "Things I bought", and you can add other things you bought too, with an amount, a best-by date, where you keep them and a note. The form will not take a date that cannot be right, such as a mistyped year. To remove an entry, tap the X. There is an Undo.