Recipe search engine Foodily is arriving on mobile today, with an all-new iPhone application that will allow users to search recipes while on the go, see what recipes their friends have liked and share their own recommendations via photos snapped with the iPhone’s camera.
In addition to the social features, the app provides mobile access to Foodily’s recipe search engine, so you can find the ingredients you need for a dish while you’re out and about.
There’s a little bit of a Foodspotting feel to the new Foodily iPhone app, as it also lets you snap and share photos of delicious creations and share them with friends. Recipes and photos can be shared directly to Foodily’s website as well as to your wider social network via the app’s Facebook integration, which takes full advantage of the new “Open Graph” features introduced at F8. But while Foodspotting is about finding and sharing great dishes at local restaurants, Foodily’s photo-taking feature is about sharing dishes you’ve created yourself.
It’s not just about bragging, though. The photos you take via Foodily are attached to the recipe online, so people can see how it actually turned out. There’s even a so-called “Yummify” feature that enhances mobile photos so they appear more like high-quality pics when shared on the network. (Specifically, the app increases the contrast optimizing for white point, sharpens the image and increases the color saturation, if you must know).
To discover new recipes, there’s the Foodily recipe search engine which supports email, in case you need to remind yourself, a friend or family member about the ingredients you’ll need to buy later on.
Although there are plenty of competitors in the recipe search space, Foodily has some momentum, having already raised $5 million from Index Ventures. The service was founded by former Yahoo’ers (Yahooligans?) Andrea Cutright and Hillary Mickell.