Master Chef 2008 Standard Edition is a fully customizable recipe application, designed with home users in mind. Featuring an ultra-simple user interface, Master Chef 2008 Standard Edition allows users to easily store all their favorite recipes, stock and outfit their kitchen and preparation areas, and easily determine individual food and drink budgets.

Built-in options also allow users to create their own custom menus, calculate and plan nutritionally-specific meals, and even publish personalized cookbooks. Whether for the pro chef or the wannabe, Master Chef 2008 is a great application for brushing up on cooking knowledge.

Chefs are left slightly underrepresented when it comes to software. Despite the huge amount of recipe content available online, very few desktop applications are available that specialize in cooking, kitchen outfitting, and high quality recipes. Master Chef 2008 Standard Edition offers a range of ultra-useful tools that are sure to be appreciated by any chef, no matter how serious.

Firstly, a built-in kitchen cabinet plan allows chefs to initially stock their kitchen, and also keeping a running stock count of what's available to them at any time. This inventory feature is ultra-convenient for at-home chefs who have trouble keeping track of ingredients. Once ingredients are stored, keeping track of them is simple with Master Chef 2008's large range of recipe and per-dish templates.

Home entertainers will enjoy the range of menu options that Master Chef 2008 has on offer. Users can easily print their own customized menus, whether for home or commercial events. Prices can be inputted, either selected by hand or determined by the cost of relative ingredients. For frequent food shoppers, Master Chef 2008 includes a built-in shopping list function, allowing users to plan out food shopping in advance and ensure that their kitchen cabinet remains stocked.

Despite offering a wide range of functions for chefs, Master Chef 2008 still feels somewhat incomplete. However, users will likely find the wide range of useful food-related features helpful. For at-home chefs or professionals, Master Chef 2008 Standard Edition is a great pick for stocking, accounting for, and managing your food.

Master Chef Standard: What We Liked

• Auto-updating 'food cabinet' and shopping list functions allow users to monitor their ingredients effortlessly.
• Predictive meal pricing and nutritional data are perfect for dieters or users on a strict food budget.
• Shopping lists can be created, saving users time when shopping for standard foods or special ingredients.

Master Chef Standard: What We Didn't Like

• While Master Chef 2008 includes a wide range of functions, some feel slightly rushed or lacking in depth.

Debono Support

Debono Software's company website has a detailed Master Chef 2008 section, which includes knowledge base articles, bug reporting forms, and on-site support request forms. An automatic update utility is provided, and technical and customer support is carried out via email.

About Debono

Most well-known for Master Chef 2008, a user-friendly ingredient and recipe management application, Debono Software Designs have over 12 years experience in software development.

     

Master Chef has a standard but simple interface, which does not require any complex interaction with the user and days to learn how to use it. Master Chef is easy to use, yet powerful and extensible. Master Chef offers a flexible end-user experience by allowing you to customize it in any way you want it to be. Note: Master Chef is not compatible with Windows Vista.

The Master Chef Process

• 1. Filling Your Cabinet
  A powerful feature of Master Chef is the Cabinet. A cabinet (aka Pantry) is the place where you store your ingredients. Although physically you can have more than one place where you hold your ingredients, Master Chef merges all these locations and keeps them all in just one single, generic place, called the Cabinet.
• 2. Knowing Your Suppliers
  Suppliers are the liquor shops, super-markets or groceries from where you purchase your ingredients. A supplier is a provider of any ingredient required for making the final recipe.
  Each supplier can have any ingredient, and an ingredient can be supplied by more than one supplier. You also have the facility to enter the actual costs of the ingredient, so you would know at a glance who sells the cheapest or the best ingredients.
• 3. Defining Your Shopping Lists
  Although you have your ingredients set up successfully in your cabinet, you would also want to purchase new ingredients or replace ingredients that have been used up. The Shopping List lets you do all this.
• 4. Creating Your Recipes
  Each individual recipe has a number of different properties that you can set up. Entering the details couldn't have been easier. Recipes can have multiple categories, and you can use different glasses from which you can drink a particular recipe.
  Master Chef includes more details that are related just for meals. You select the cuisine, default meal type and course, as well as enter details recipe procedures, cooking techniques and equipment.
• 5. Inventing Your Menus
  A menu is a list of recipes showing the ingredients and selling price of each and every recipe. You create your own menus depending on the party you're giving, the occasion or the season.
  Master Chef includes an intelligent Wine Pairing Wizard that finds the most suitable wine that matches the recipes you have
• 6. Organizing Your Meal Plans
  Create daily meal plans that you can recur in any way imaginable. Zoom out to a particular week or to a whole month, giving you an overview of which days and busy and which not.
  Calculate the nutritional analysis of each individual meal plan item, for a whole course or for the complete meal plan. Once you're done, create a shopping list from the meal plan and you can go shopping!
• 7. Publishing Your Cookbooks
  Once your recipes and meal plans are in place, the final stage is to create and publish cookbooks. Create a chapter hieararchy the way you want it, and then drag-and-drop recipes and meal plans to each chapter.
  Select one of the standard templates or any other that you have created, and at the click of a button, the whole cookbook will be published into Microsoft Word where you can add the finishing touches before printing the cookbook.