Mastercook 15 Recipe PC

3.2 | 214 ratings

Price: 19.95

Last update: 01-05-2025

About this item

Organize thousands of recipes into custom cookbooks
Create menus, meal plans and shopping lists
Nutrition and costing per serving, recipe & menu
Collaborate and share recipes with others in real time with group cookbooks

Top reviews from the United States

Ali Matson

I've been using this product for more years than I can count and am happy I broke down and finally upgraded

Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2018

Although the interface isn't as appealing as it was back when MC was being produced by Sierra, it still has the same functionality and ease of use. I've been using this product for more years than I can count and am happy I broke down and finally upgraded.

V. Goldberg

Don't bother -- more trouble than worth it

Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2018

A very long time ago I used Mastercook and then switched over to Living Cook because their software was so much easier to utilize. Then came the day when LC disappeared and I had nearly 2K of recipes that I could not access. I read that Mastercook would convert those recipes so I bought it. Big mistake. You have to send your recipes to their customer service department if the conversion process didn't work. It didn't. What a pain!! Then came the problem of trying to simply print out a recipe onto a 5x8 card. The convoluted steps I had to go through for each recipe has completely soured me on Mastercook. The best I could do for printing is portrait and I prefer landscape. I have been so completely disgusted by this software that I no longer try to use it for collecting recipes. Why bother. I just use it for the recipes that do not have nutritional information. So I am once more looking for new software.

N. L. Green

There's a better software out there. Update

Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2020

I have been a MasterCook user for at least 10 years. Up to now MasterCook has been the #1 recipe database out there. I have used Living Cookbook, but went back to MasterCook when the software didn't meet my expectations. I have the software you download to your computer not just the online database.

That being said, MasterCook has many issues and quirks. The database is easily corrupted, causing sync errors and making life difficult for users. On certain recipe blogs, recipes won't download correctly and have to be edited manually. Cookbooks disappear from the desktop and have to be reinstalled. I still haven't figured out how to cut and paste recipes into the web tool. If you get one duplicate recipe in your cookbook, the cookbook won't sync properly.

It's true MasterCook now has an app for cell phones, etc, however, it is slow beyond belief. I often go to the market and, once there, I sit in my car and choose a recipe to make for dinner. It takes 5-10 minutes to get the MasterCook recipe up on my phone so I can see the ingredient list.

The one redeeming factor is that tech support is excellent. Pam, the support tech, is quick to reply and will stick with you until your issue is resolved. It's just that I have several issues every week.

Recently, quite by accident I came across another software called Plan to Eat, which is a database, like MasterCook, where you download your recipes using a web tool and then you can plug your recipes into a weekly planner and create. weekly shopping list. You don't create cookbooks like you do in MasterCook, but Plan to East has Tags that you can assign to recipes so you can search by any key you wish. I created tags for my recipe books so I can search by cookbook. You can also search by many preinstalled tags, making it very easy to find any recipes. The web tool works almost flawlessly. Out of 50 recipes I downloaded only two repeated the ingredients. Unlike Mastercook, the web tool will notify you if there was a a problem with a download, allowing you to correct it at the time you download the recipe.

Plan to Eat also has apps for the computer and cell phones. The apps work very quickly and flawlessly. I have been using Plan to Eat for a few weeks now and I am done with MasterCook.

By the way, a year's subscription to Plan to Eat is only $39.00 per year, cheaper than Mastercook.

If you are a MasterCook user who is tired of all the troublesome issues or are thinking about purchasing MasterCook software,, check out Plan To Eat. I think you will be much happier with Plan To Eat.

UPDATE: I wanted to update my initial review following MasterCook's major update of its software. I have found since the update that many of the problems I experiencd before the update have been resolved. The software runs much smoother. You can access recipes on your cell phone much faster than before, which is a Godsend. The only thing I still find annoying is the Web Tool still doesn't capture recipes correctly on Allrecipes.com, which is a major deal for me as I use that software for recipes all the time. I recently got a message from MasterCook that they are coming out with a new web tool, so hopefully it will work better with more recipe software applications and blogs. I will now recommend MasterCook as a viable Recipe Software.

Haydn

Premise of this software is great. However

Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2018

Premise of this software is great. However, the first year I had this all of the recipes I had hand typed into a "cookbook" that I created disappeared one day. Frustrating, but I figured ok - let's give this another go, it was an unfortunate mistake. Another year's worth of recipes and today it happened again. I updated the program, opened it up and saw that my recipes were intact.... until I added one new recipe. Then, all of the recipes are gone and the new one I added was not even there. A completely empty cookbook again. Found the file, tried restoring to a previous version - nothing. Whoever creates this program has no idea how to design software - avoid like the plague.

Herky Jerky

Good, but clunky and dated

Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2021

This program is useful, but it's clunky, to say the least. There's a newer version, but it seems overpriced and connected to an online subscription (which I do not want to pay), so I bought this version. Since I had an earlier version of this software, I knew how to navigate the system, so it works for me. However, if you are new, there's a heck of a learning curve.

One nice thing about this software is that it gives you the nutritional information for your recipe, but you have to make sure to put the ingredients in as they are listed in the software's database of ingredients. If something is not included, you can add a custom ingredient, however, that process also has a learning curve, and you need to make sure you pull the information you add from a reliable source in order to assure the nutrition information you receive is accurate.

The software's database of ingredients lacks a lot of the ingredients that have become common ingredients in the last 20 years or so. (I read that the newest version has an updated database, but I have no intention of paying for a subscription on a recipe program.) So, for example, I had to add almond flour a couple of days ago, and I have had to add a lot of other now-common ingredients.

A particularly nice feature of the nutritional information is that it includes exchanges. So, if you are a diabetic or just a health-conscious person who follows the exchange diet, you can put in a recipe, and the software will tell you how many exchanges are included in each serving. However, if you add custom ingredients, you have to accurately add in those exchanges, or any recipe that includes those ingredients will not accurately reflect the exchanges.

Also, I find that the layout on the print pages is a bit lame. It just doesn't look modern. Maybe they updated it in the newest version (which is the version after this one), but I am not paying a subscription to find out.

So, bottom line: if you want to avoid the subscription on the newest version, this is an acceptable version, but it's clunky, dated, and requires more effort on your part.

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