NYT Cooking Tested: The New AI Changes Recipes—and It Mostly Works

TVS News AI, editorially supervised, presents NYT Cooking Tested: The New AI Changes Recipes—and It Mostly Works.

Change a recipe without having to reinvent the ingredients and quantities yourself: That is exactly what the New York Times has added as a new beta feature in its Cooking app. The recipe editor is designed to modify existing recipes using artificial intelligence so that they better suit your individual needs.

That may initially sound like an unspectacular feature. For you, however, it could make the difference between actually cooking a recipe from the app or dropping out of cooking mode because of a missing ingredient, an ingredient you cannot tolerate or a different outcome. WIRED tried the new feature. Its verdict is predominantly positive.

In short: You enter a recipe into the app and have individual components swapped out or the dish adapted. The AI handles the changes. According to the test, the result is usable in most cases.

What the new recipe editor is supposed to be able to do

Replacing ingredients is one of the editor's central functions. This makes it possible to adapt a published recipe to your pantry or to the ingredients you actually want to use. The key difference from a conventional recipe collection: The original does not merely remain unchanged; the app creates an adapted version.

The recipe editor can also modify recipes more generally. This gives the tool more scope than a simple ingredient search. That can be especially useful if you want to try a dish in which certain components do not work for you.

One important caveat: WIRED reports that the feature mostly works. This is not a verdict on perfect AI output. Instead, the editorial team describes the results as overall convincing. The available summary does not specify which individual substitution attempts worked particularly well or less well.

Why the Cooking app can now do more than save recipes

The Cooking app has previously served as a recipe library. With the new editor, it gains a feature that turns a fixed recipe into a modified version. You are therefore no longer dependent on cooking an existing dish exactly as written.

Substitution is particularly practical for ingredients you cannot tolerate, do not want to buy or simply do not have at hand. The recipe is retained as a starting point while the AI handles the adaptation. At the very least, this saves you some of the work involved in cooking and planning with the app.

The catch: The tool is in a beta phase. This means it is being tested in an environment where individual features may still change. It is also confirmed that the Cooking app is currently being expanded only to include the swapping of ingredients and the adaptation of recipes.

What WIRED actually confirms—and what it does not

The test provides, above all, a clear overall verdict. The new AI feature generally appeals to the editorial team's taste: It delivers predominantly usable modifications to existing recipes. The central premise for users is therefore clear.

However, the available information lacks concrete examples for a detailed assessment. The summary does not name any individual recipes that were substituted or any specific failures. Nor does it provide detailed information about the extent of the changes, how the system operates or its limitations. You should therefore not regard these points as tested features.

For everyday use, this means you can use the Cooking app as a starting point and adapt a recipe to your ingredients and plans. But do not expect the beta feature to provide a perfect solution for every recipe. The claim that it “mostly works” is the more realistic promise.

Who will benefit from the AI recipe feature

You are most likely to benefit if you regularly use recipes from the app and already want to change individual ingredients. In that case, the AI handles part of the reformulation. This is especially useful if your pantry does not fully match the published recipe or if you are looking for a variation on a dish.

The feature is less convincing if you plan every recipe completely yourself and then cook according to your own specifications. In that case, it does not replace an entire cooking process, but rather mainly part of the recipe adaptation process.

WIRED's practical conclusion is therefore simple: The new Cooking feature can be worthwhile, especially if you want to adapt recipes flexibly. It is already available as a beta, and the editorial team is predominantly satisfied with the results. Try it out if you have an ingredient swap or a particular variation in mind.