MasterCook 5.0: Food & Wine

If you strive to throw dinner parties in the style of Martha Stewart or even if you're just trying to better organize your weekly shopping and cooking routine, MasterCook: Food and Wine can provide you with some mouthwatering recipes and timesaving shortcuts. The software is easy to install, but requires some time with the manual at first to understand how to operate the more advanced features.


One of the best features of the software is its expansive nature. Upon installation, you can add six different recipe books, with 50 to 75 recipes apiece, into the software. You can also download additional recipe books from the MasterCook Web site and add your own concoctions into the "My Cookbook Folder" to increase your recipe database. We found the process of importing and exporting recipe files via the Web to be straightforward and worthwhile.

MasterCook also shines when working to plan meals and dietary needs. The calendar feature allows you to see weekly menus, using recipes from all of the separate cookbooks within your MasterList. If you're monitoring your caloric or sodium intake, you can click to get a nutritional analysis of each recipe to make sure it suits your dietary needs. You can also edit recipes within the software if you want to substitute or reduce an ingredient or scale recipes up or down to accommodate the number of people you'll be serving. Weekly menus can be imported into a shopping list that you can print out and bring to the grocery store, saving valuable time. There is a time requirement, though: while we were eventually able to figure out how to use the meal planning and shopping list features, we needed to spend additional time with the manual on our first try.

With software this complex, we encountered some frustrations. The software offers videos on in-depth topics, such as how to make a pie crust; however, we were unable to get the video to run. While MasterCook: Food and Wine's box promises "52 complete special occasion menus," this feature was not mentioned in the lengthy manual and we couldn't locate it within the program. (An obvious disappointment, since the presence of complete menu plans is a huge advantage for the less experienced cook.) In addition, we had a difficult time locating Food and Wine Magazine's Official Wine Guide within the program. Once we found it, we were impressed with the extensive list, but wished that the program would assist in pairing wines with particular entrees.

In spite of its few shortcomings, we found MasterCook: Food and Wine to be a valuable planning tool for the home chef. Besides its lengthy list of features, it eliminates the need for bulky cookbooks and gives you more space in the kitchen for cooking. --Cristina Vaamonde