What it does
Family Table replaces the recipe box, the screenshots, and the three different apps nobody else in the house can open. Everyone in a kitchen sees the same cookbook, on whatever they happen to be holding.
Get recipes in
Photograph a handwritten card or a cookbook page and it becomes a real recipe, with ingredients and steps you can search. Paste a link, type it out, or bring a whole collection across from another app — photos, and whose recipe it was, included.
Cook from it
On a tablet, the steps and their ingredients sit side by side. On a phone, one step at a time with the amounts repeated in each step, so you never scroll back with your hands covered. Turn it sideways and it still fits.
Hands-free
Say “next step” or “start the timer” with flour on your hands, and have each step read aloud. A step that says twenty minutes offers to time it, the alarm keeps ringing until someone hears it, and the screen will not sleep.
Plan the week
Put a meal on a day, with its sides. Hold it and drag it to another night, and the whole dinner moves. Eating out does not lose the recipe — it asks where to put it instead.
One shopping list
Built from the plan and added up across recipes, so butter wanted by three of them is one line. Grouped by aisle, and sent to whoever is going — by message or email, from your own phone.
Leftovers, before they go off
Say what went in the fridge and what went in the freezer. Family Table works out how long it keeps, and can remind you the morning it needs eating.
Nutrition, honestly
An estimate per serving from the USDA food database, shown as a label with every ingredient it could and could not weigh. It fills in the fields WeightWatchers asks for — it never guesses at Points.
Notes, not scores
“Needs more garlic.” “Ben asks for this.” Notes are shared with the kitchen; favorites are yours alone. Nothing is rated out of five, and nothing is averaged.
Share a recipe
Send a link to anyone, in or out of the family. They open it without an account, and you can revoke it whenever you like. Send one to another kitchen and it arrives as an offer they can accept or decline.
On the home screen
Add it to a phone or tablet and it opens full screen like any other app, with reminders if you want them. Recipes you have looked at still open when the kitchen wifi does not.
Roast for 20 minutes, then turn the heat down to 375°F.
For this step
3 lb whole chicken
2 tbsp butter, softened
Cook mode: one step at a time, with that step’s amounts beside it. The screen stays awake.
3 carrots
1 bunch parsley
5 plum tomatoes
1 lb butter
5 eggs
250 g all-purpose flour
The shopping list, built from the week’s plan and grouped by aisle. Five eggs, because two recipes wanted them.
The wine cellar
Optional · for adults
For a kitchen that keeps wine as well as recipes. An owner switches it on, and it sits beside the cookbook rather than in a separate app — so the bottles know what is for dinner.
Snap a label
Photograph a bottle and the details are read for you to check, or scan its barcode to find it again. Bring a whole collection across from Vinocell, Vivino, CellarTracker or a spreadsheet.
Wine with dinner
Every dinner on the plan offers two or three bottles you already own, with how to serve them. Open one and it comes off the count.
What it’s worth
A running total for insurance from the prices and values you enter, and a report to print or save as a PDF. Estimates are labelled as estimates and never counted.
Tastings, together
Photograph the tasting menu and everyone rates each pour from their own phone, with an album for the day. Buy a bottle there and it waits as “on order” until it arrives.
Clubs and a wish list
A reminder before each club’s customize-by date. Forward a shipment email to your kitchen’s own address and it is read for you. Keep a list of what to buy next.
Wineries, and who sees what
Each winery filled in with its website, address and directions. An owner chooses who gets the cellar at all, and who sees it without the prices.
142
Bottles in the cellar
Next club shipment · 4 bottles
Customize by Friday
The cellar at a glance: what is in it, what is coming, and what should be opened before it fades.
Roast Chicken
Garlic mashed potatoes
2021 Sonoma Coast Chardonnay
Saturday’s tasting
2019 Estate Cabernet★★★★☆
2022 Rosé of Grenache★★★★★
A bottle you already own, chosen for tonight’s dinner — and the scores from a tasting, rated by everyone at the table.
Kitchens
A kitchen is the unit of privacy: its recipes, its plan, its shopping list, its members. Nothing crosses between kitchens unless somebody deliberately shares it.
More than one family
Several households can use Family Table side by side, each with its own cookbook. Nobody sees anybody else’s.
More than one kitchen each
You can belong to several and switch between them — the family cookbook, and the one a grown-up child keeps of their own.
An invitation does either
It brings someone into your kitchen, or sets them up with one of their own that they can share back.
Sharing between them
Send a recipe to another kitchen as a copy they own, or as a link that keeps up with your changes until they make it theirs. In two kitchens yourself? Copy a recipe straight across.
Family Table is not a public service. It is a personal project, and every account exists because somebody was invited. There is no sign-up form, no advertising, no analytics, and nothing is sold or shared with anyone.
Signing in
Members sign in with Google, or by asking for a one-time link sent to their email address. There are no passwords. Google tells us only your email address, name and profile picture, and we ask for nothing else from your Google account.