Provenance: your first week
Provenance turns a recipe you already cook into the whole dish: where each ingredient comes from, who stocks it near you, and what to pour with it. Five minutes gets you started; a week tells you whether it earns its place.
- Before you start
- Bring a dish in
- Read a dish
- Find and keep
- Your town, and what to pour
- Costing and HACCP
- When something's off
- Your first week
Before you start
- Open Garth's link on your own phone. Tap Make an account: your name, an email you check, a password of eight or more characters. No card is asked for, now or at the end of the 30 days.
- Check your email. A welcome note arrives within a minute; tap its link once to confirm your address. Nothing waits on this.
- Put it on your home screen so it opens like an app and stays signed in.
iPhone: it must be in Safari (the blue compass). If the link opened inside Messages, Facebook or Gmail, copy the address and paste it into Safari. At the bottom of Safari tap Share (a square with an arrow up; if you only see three dots, tap those first). Scroll the list and tap Add to Home Screen, then Add. Close Safari; open Provenance from the icon from now on.
Android: in Chrome, tap the three dots top right, then Add to Home screen or Install app, then Install.
No install needed: provenance.kitchen works in any browser. Tap Enter to sign in; tick Remember me on this device.
Your beta invitation gives you The Kitchen, with no five-dish limit, for 30 days. If a page mentions "start free" or five dishes, ignore it; your invitation already took care of that.
Bring a dish in
Start with one dish you cook often. Tap Kitchen, then Bring a dish in. Five doors:
- On a website: Paste a link. Copy the page's address and paste it in.
- In a message, a note or an email: Paste text. Copy the words and paste them in.
- In a book, on a card, on a napkin: Photograph a page. One page at a time.
- A whole book or menu as a file: Import a PDF.
- In your head: Write from scratch.
Tap Bring it in and wait about thirty seconds. Your dish opens with its method, the stockists near you and three things to pour.
If a link won't come in: some sites refuse to let other sites read their pages. Open the recipe in your browser, select all the text, copy it, and use Paste text. Tell Garth which site it was.
If the photo is an empty plate, the dish is still fine. Nobody sees your dishes unless you send them the link.
Read a dish
At the top: the name, where it's from, a few paragraphs on what it is. Swipe left or right for the next dish. Two buttons:
- Cook opens the dish full screen for the stove: ingredients with boxes to tick, steps one at a time with Next and Back, plus and minus to change how many it serves. Tap Screen on so your phone doesn't go dark. Exit cook brings you back.
- Keep puts a dish from Recipes into your own Kitchen.
The numbered parts: I The Market List (ingredients, the benchmark version, who stocks it near you; tap a stockist; "Your own market" means any good shop). II The Method (the steps, with a line from the Library under the ones with a technique behind them). III Quality Hierarchy (four grades, best to what will do). IV Sensory Tests (what to look, feel and smell for; the one point where the dish lives or dies). V Cross-cuisine (the dishes elsewhere that work the same way). VI What to Pour (three things to drink and why).
A frosted part with an Enter button means you are signed out.
Find and keep
The magnifier at the top searches the whole site and forgives spelling. Recipes (bottom of the screen) is the shelf of dishes already written to the standard, by cuisine; scroll a cuisine sideways or tap See all. The Library is the books behind the dishes, one per cuisine, for reading. On any dish in Recipes, tap Keep and it joins your Kitchen; swipe through your Kitchen, or tap Wall or List.
Your town, and what to pour
At the top of every dish it says Cooking in and a place. Tap Choose a town once and pick yours. From then on the Market List names your town's shops first: the supermarket for most things, the butcher for meat, the market with its day. "Your own market" means no shop in your town is listed yet; any good shop will do, and telling Garth which one you use helps.
What to pour is part VI of every dish. Pour at the bottom of the screen is the cellar for your region, makers first, with the pairing room if you'd rather start from the plate.
Costing and HACCP
Beta members have two of the professional tools on every dish of their own, free while the beta runs; scroll to the foot of one of your dishes. Costing works out what a portion costs from the Market List; check the prices and change any you know better. HACCP writes the food-safety brief for the dish, in the form an inspector would recognise; five a day each. If you cook for money, or might, tell Garth whether they'd change how you work.
When something's off
Open the menu (three lines, top right), tap Tell Garth, tick the box that fits, write a line, tap Send. The note arrives with the page and the phone you used. Garth reads every one. Bugs that stop you are usually fixed within a day and you'll hear when to try again. No note is too small.
Your first week
Day 1: make your account and put Provenance on your home screen; bring in one dish you cook often. Day 2: choose your town and see which shops the dish names. Day 3: cook something from the Cook screen. Day 4: keep two dishes from Recipes. Day 5: look at what to pour with dinner. Day 6: open Costing on one of your dishes. Any day: send one Tell Garth note. After two weeks Garth will ask you one question.