Orzella and ChatGPT: keeping the recipe you liked

The short answer

ChatGPT is good for working a dish out. You can ask it to make something milder, swap an ingredient or rescue a sauce that's gone grainy. If you organise those chats in a Project, it can hold onto the recipe too.

ChatGPT Projects

Orzella is for the recipes you've settled on. It keeps them alongside the ones you saved from websites, photos and PDFs. You can search them by an ingredient or a word from your own notes, and cook from a screen built for a busy kitchen.

If you mostly improvise and enjoy cooking from a conversation, ChatGPT may be all you need. If your recipes are spread across chats, screenshots, bookmarks and PDFs, and the frustrating part of dinner is tracking down the one you made last month, Orzella is built for you.

What ChatGPT already does well

ChatGPT isn't a place where recipes go to vanish. ChatGPT Projects can keep related chats, files and instructions together, and you can save a response as a project source. Availability depends on your account or workspace. You can also upload supported files and images, such as a photo of a recipe card.

ChatGPT Projects · upload supported files and images

A "Weeknight dinners" project is a reasonable system. The questions are how you want to find a recipe later, and what you want to look at when the pan is hot.

Why you might keep finished recipes in Orzella

Picture a Tuesday. You have red lentils, half a tin of coconut milk and someone at the table who doesn't like heat. You ask ChatGPT for a milder dal and add spinach. You like how it turns out. Three weeks later, you want it again.

You find it by what you remember

You probably won't remember what you called it. You might remember the lentils, or the note you left after dinner.

Orzella searches recipe titles, ingredients and your own notes. Search "lentil" or "kids liked" and the dal appears. It sits with the recipes you've saved from websites, pasted text, readable photos and selected PDF pages. Collections and favourites help you group the dishes you return to, such as a "Weeknights" collection or a starred handful of reliable dinners.

You have a cooking view for the stove

The cooking view shows the ingredients and steps on screen, with named timers. "Simmer lentils" and "Toast spices" stay distinct when both are running.

Change the servings and supported ingredient quantities scale with them. Cooking times and temperatures stay as written, so if you double the dal in a wider pan, keep an eye on the simmer.

The recipe changes when you decide it should

Orzella recipes are editable. After dinner, set the chilli to what you actually used and add a note: "Half the chilli. Spinach at the end, not the start." Next time, you open that version and cook.

Moving a recipe from ChatGPT to Orzella

Once the dish is settled, ask ChatGPT for a clean copy:

Rewrite the final version of this recipe as plain text, with a title, servings, an ingredient list with quantities, and numbered steps. Include only the changes we agreed on. Don't add new ingredients.

Read the result against the conversation or original recipe you started from. Check the quantities, times and temperatures before you save it. Then paste the text into Orzella, review the recipe draft, add your own note and tap Save recipe.

You can keep using both. Talk a dish through in ChatGPT, then keep the version you cooked in Orzella.

Orzella is made for iPhone and iPad.

Start with a recipe you want to cook again

Choose a dish you’ve made from a chat, a screenshot or a website. Save it in Orzella and add the detail you want to remember next time. When you want to cook it again, search by an ingredient or a word from your note.