Cool idea – I love it that people are still coming up with clever ideas – this one about keep recipes organized and handy!

From Mashable:

Name: KeepRecipes

Quick Pitch: An easy way to save recipes from websites, cookbooks and other users in one place.

Genius Idea: Selling digital versions of paper cookbooks that automatically plug into the system.

My current online recipe box is my inbox. While surfing the web’s recipe databases, blogs and websites, I email links to myself that I hope I’ll be able to find by searching my gmail later. But as my unwieldy inbox pushes the recipes further and further down the page, I’m more likely to forget about them than cook them.

KeepRecipes is courting home chefs like me by promising to put all of our online and offline recipes in one neat virtual box — and help us discover new dishes at the same time.

The startup attempts this through multiple tools. My favorite is a bookmarklet that works like Instapaper for food. By clicking on the KeepRecipes button, users can easily save the ingredient list on any webpage to their KeepRecipes account. The same recipes synch to a free iPhone app that can be pulled out in a grocery store or a kitchen (there’s even a feature that keeps the phone’s screen lit during cooking time so that users need not touch their phones with messy hands).

Due to copyright issues, the bookmarklet can only auto-populate the ingredient list of the recipe. But if the user highlights instructions before clicking the bookmarklet, those are also saved with the ingredient list.

 

 Another way to add recipes to KeepRecipes is to search for content added by others on the site. If you’re in a browsing mood, it helps to create what the site calls a “taste graph” by following publications and users whose recipes you like. The New York Times, Food Network, Not Your Mother‘s series and The Today Show all have presences on the site.

At this point, users still need to add recipes from paper cookbooks manually. But KeepRecipes is working on an easier way to do this that adds a revenue source to the site at the same time. The plan is to sell access to digital versions of paper cookbooks that come automatically loaded into user recipe boxes. The Not Your Mother’s series and A. J. Rathbun’s cocktail book Dark Sprits and cookbooks from the A Baker’s Field Guide series are just a few that will be available before Thanksgiving.

 

 For users who already own some cookbooks in paper, the startup will offer a digital version for a small fee after proving they own the book through specific questions (i.e. “on page 34, what is the third word?”). Harvard Common Press has already agreed to sell digital versions of their cookbooks this way.

KeepRecipes tried out the premium recipe model in April by selling a cookbook of Japan-inspired recipes that has raised more than $5,000 for the Red Cross Japan earthquake and tsunami relief fund. Later, they launched a cookbook with recipes from famous moms that benefits FEED, an organization that helps feed hungry school children. Only users who bought a cookbook in this way have had access to the site up until recently.

 

 Now is a difficult time to be courting home chefs. Foodily, Gojee and other startup recipe platforms are all gunning to be the site that cooks turn to before heading to their kitchens.

“There are a number of recipe startups and we’re aware of that,” says KeepRecipes CEO and co-founder Phil Michaelson, “but the way that we fit within the cooking process is very different — the idea that they can use the websites they’re already using, but then keep them with KeepRecipes. We’re helping them to use the recipes and to memorialize the occasion of what they cooked.”