Recipe Matcher has the motto “Miscellany In, Delicious Out”. It's an apt motto, since the best part of their service is the ability to enter in the ingredients you have on hand and have them match you up with a recipe. That's perfect for people who love to cook, but have trouble coming up with new ideas.

I've seen these ingredient search systems on other sites, of course. The main difference I see between Recipe Matcher and other similar sites is that Recipe Matcher doesn't limit the number of ingredients you can enter for your search. That's a nice feature for someone who wants to get a better result than the typical Campbell's soup casserole style dishes.

Recipe Matcher also offers a database of drink recipes. This means the clueless amateur bartender can enter in the liquor from their cabinet and whatever mixers are on hand and get real time drink ideas to impress their friends. That's a nice feature for the host who wants to branch out.

You don't have to rely solely on the ingredient engine to get recipes. Recipe Matcher also offers a way to browse the recipes in their database and look for something that meets your specific needs. The recipe search feature lets you search by title or type of cuisine. It would be nice if they also offered a search by course, but they don't currently.

Users can also enter in their own recipes to the database. The recipes can then be rated by people who make them, offering a way to see the most popular recipes first. You can also mark recipes in the database as favorites so you don't have to search for them time and time again.

Other features of Recipe Matcher include an eGrocery List you can print out, and an ePantry. The ePantry is the push button version of the ingredient search engine from the front page. I'm not sure why they included it two different ways, but users have their preference of typing the ingredients in by hand or checking them off a list.

Once you enter ingredients in your ePantry, Recipe Matcher will tell you what you still need to buy. You can even print the handy list of remaining items you need to buy to take with you to the store. The link to print the list of missing items from your pantry is at the top of the recipe, right next to the ingredients themselves.

I think Recipe Matcher is on its way to offering a useful, easy to use service. It still needs some fine tuning to take it to the next level. As with any new service, the database is looking a bit slim right now. They have a number of options in each cuisine, with no blank spaces, but in a crowded niche they need to offer more, and fast. It would also be nice if it made itself compatible with my favorite recipe programs, like MacGourmet, so that I could share recipes here like I do with sites like Epicurious. Regardless, I plan to keep this one in my bookmarks and check back on it to see how it progresses.