What does "indexed" mean, and can I request a book or magazine be indexed?

An indexed book is one where every recipe is searchable. For each recipe we store the name, the main ingredients, and the page number, so you can search by recipe name, ingredient, book or author, or category like ethnicity, meal type, special diet, and occasion. In seconds you can find out whether any of your cookbooks has a recipe for spinach lasagna.

We don’t store the full recipe. For the method and amounts, go to the book itself, or the online link where there is one. That’s by design. We show the ingredients and page number and leave the full recipe with the book and its author.

Requesting a book

If a book you own isn’t indexed yet, click “Request Index” on its page in Eat Your Books or CookShelf. We prioritize books by how many members request them and how many shelves they’re on, so every request moves a book up the queue. Once we start, the status changes from “Request Index” to “Indexing Now,” and the book is usually indexed within four weeks of its status changing (longer if a member volunteer is doing it). We’ll email you when it’s done, and newly indexed books show up at the top of your Bookshelf.

There are over 156,000 unindexed books in the Library, and real people index every one by hand, so we work through them in order of popularity. Your recipe count will keep growing.

You can also index your own books. Members index their own books with our indexing tools, we proofread the results, and the finished index becomes available to everyone. It’s an in-depth process; if you’re interested, the Indexing as a member walks you through it.

Requesting a magazine

We’ve indexed most of the top cooking magazines in the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand, based on a survey of what members read most. If there’s a title you’d like to see indexed, email us at info@eatyourbooks.com. Members can also index lesser-known titles themselves.

What about blogs?

We rarely index full blogs, since unlike a book a blog never stops publishing. If there’s a blog recipe you love, the Bookmarklet lets you add any single recipe from almost any website to your Bookshelf, so it’s searchable alongside your books.