Maybe Amazon is working on a kitchen computer after all.
But instead of rolling out the purpose built kitchen computing device rumored a year ago, the kitchen ‘computer’ from Amazon is taking shape in the form of Alexa, the company’s voice control interface and virtual assistant, as well as the dozens of cooking and kitchen focused Alexa skills.
We’ve covered the growing list of kitchen-centric skills here at The Spoon, which include offerings from the likes of the Food Network and Campbells Soup, but with the company’s latest skill, Alexa users now have access to a massive database of recipe content and recommendations from one of the biggest recipe sites in the world.
That’s because this latest addition to Amazon’s ‘kitchen computer’ comes from Allrecipes, the granddaddy of cooking sites with over 60 thousand digital recipes. In addition to access to the site’s huge recipe repository, users will also be able to get voice guided cooking instructions, which will allow them to “control the pace of their cooking by instructing Alexa to pause, next, repeat, skip or move forward.” This evolution goes beyond what was previously available through Alexa’s native Cookbook skill offering, not only in the breadth of recipes but also in the voice guidance feature.
For Allrecipes part, it marks a continued evolution of one of the longest standing recipe and cooking-centric sites on the Internet. The company has been increasingly positioning itself as a cooking-centric social network in recent years, and this past October launched a new cable TV show on CW centered around the Allrecipes brand.
At the Smart Kitchen Summit last month, AllRecipes VP Esmee Williams talked about how much things have changed since the company’s early days in the nineties.
“The top search term (in 1999) was ‘recipes,’” said Williams. “Today the search terms are so much more granular. It’s like pork chops, gluten free, paleo, ready in 15 minutes, no garlic. The cooks have become so much more sophisticated.”
And with their new Allrecipes skill, users can now ask Alexa to help them find that gluten free pork chop recipe.
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