Claude’s interactive – Megan Ellis tried Gemini and Claude as recipe apps while juggling dietary needs for a partner with Type 1 diabetes and her own migraine-related restrictions. Gemini delivered text-heavy instructions, while Claude created interactive recipe cards with cooking m
When it comes to cooking, Megan Ellis didn’t need another chatbot promise—she needed something that could keep up with real life. She’d been wasting hours hunting for the “perfect” recipes that fit her preferences, and the usual route of scraping through online instructions only made things harder.
The frustration wasn’t abstract. Her boyfriend has Type 1 diabetes. so when he visits she tries to cook meals that won’t spike his blood sugar. She’s also a vegetarian and avoids certain fermented foods because of chronic migraines. That combination has made “niche” recipe shopping feel like a scavenger hunt. and Ellis says the online format—long intros. muddled instructions. and measurement units that may not match her region—wasn’t built for speed or certainty.
Ellis already had one workaround: a recipe app called Paprika that highlights instructions and creates shopping lists based on ingredients. But she ran into a recurring problem when instructions are buried. She describes a vegan bolognaise recipe that had two sets of instructions. with one including an additional 20 minutes of cooking time. The extra timing. she says. showed up more than once—unexpected steps when she thought she was done with the main process.
That’s what pushed her to test AI for cooking. She wanted a way to get recipes that match restrictions without the “bloat” of dense pages full of filler.
She tested two chatbots: Gemini and Claude. Both can generate meal suggestions and recipe instructions, but Ellis says they behave so differently that one of them effectively became a cooking tool—and the other didn’t hold up once the actual cooking started.
Gemini gives recipes in plain text; Claude builds a cooking interface
Gemini’s approach is straightforward. Ellis requests a recipe, and Gemini returns a list of ingredients and instructions. The catch is that she often follows recipes on her phone. and the text-heavy presentation wasn’t ideal for a small screen. Still, she found Gemini useful for discovering new recipes and, in some cases, for providing visuals of the meal.
But for her day-to-day cooking workflow, Ellis kept running into the same limitation: long-form instructions. Even after she created a Gem for recipes that included her dietary restrictions. Gemini’s focus on lengthy. continuous instructions meant she didn’t end up using it when she was actually cooking.
Claude handled recipes differently from the start. When she asks for a recipe in Claude, Ellis says the chatbot automatically creates an interactive recipe card. It also includes a cooking mode that takes her through each step in the recipe, complete with timers. The interactive card is designed to adjust easily to mobile screens. and Ellis adds that timers work with her phone’s built-in clock.
She also points out two practical controls that matter while cooking: she can adjust the number of servings she wants to cook, and she can switch between US and metric units. And importantly, she says she doesn’t need to prompt Claude to use the interactive format—it’s simply the default.
In the end, her takeaway is stark. Gemini is useful for discovering recipes and generating text-based instructions. Claude is built for the moment you’re holding a phone over a stove.
What she actually used: Claude’s recipe cards, timers, checklists, and substitutions
Ellis says Claude became her new favorite cooking companion specifically because of the recipe cards and cooking mode. The one feature she misses from her cooking app is the ability to keep the screen on while she’s cooking, but she calls it a minor inconvenience.
Claude also helped her with shopping lists. She used the chat to create a checklist she could copy into Notesnook. She describes using this method for shopping for ingredients for a vegetarian cottage pie.
There’s another benefit she valued while cooking: ingredient substitution. In the vegetarian cottage pie scenario, she says she didn’t have access to vegan Worcestershire sauce. She asked Claude for help, and Ellis says the AI suggested substitutions and regenerated the recipe.
She also credits Claude’s organization with making it easier to return to recipes later. Because Ellis sets recipes as a project, the chats are easy to find. She creates a new chat for each recipe, and that dedicated chat keeps both the recipe card and the ingredient checklist together.
A simple difference—text versus interaction—ended up deciding the winner
Ellis didn’t just prefer one chatbot in theory. She preferred the one that matched the way she cooks: step-by-step guidance with timers, adjustable serving sizes, unit switching, and an interface that doesn’t fight a small phone screen.
She says the broader lesson for tech newcomers is that it doesn’t have to be complicated. A lot of AI features are aimed at productivity or professional use. but Claude’s interactive visuals and recipe cards show how an ordinary person can use AI to make daily tasks easier. After trying both Gemini and Claude specifically as recipe apps. Ellis’s recommendation is direct: if you want a digital cooking companion. she says to give Claude a try.
Gemini Claude recipe apps AI for cooking interactive recipe cards cooking mode timers shopping lists Notesnook dietary restrictions Type 1 diabetes migraine triggers vegetarian