Recipes, cooking tips on your smart device

Taking a tablet with your summer food isn't about swallowing an antacid. It's about keeping an iPad or other smart device nearby for recipes, nutrition advice, and the keys to unlocking culinary lingo.

Epicurious is a free app from Conde Nast Digital for most devices (one Epicurious application even works on HP printers without need of another device). The iPad version opens to a home screen titled "The cook's companion" and a menu of timely categories such as "grilled mains," "picnic ideas," and "summer cocktails."

Tap on any of the category titles to browse recipes, which come with photos and opportunities to save a recipe as a favorite or to share it by e-mail or on Twitter, Facebook, or other social network.

From the search page, you may delve by choosing and mixing criteria - say, main ingredients and dietary considerations - though my attempt at a sausage-and-bacon dish that was also low in calories was, of course, too much to ask.

If you select favorite recipes and want to sync them among devices, there's a $1.99 in-app fee to create a virtual and portable "recipe box."

In the Kitchen, from Television Food Network G.P., is an app that costs $1.99 for Apple and Android devices and promises to put the Food Network and 45,000 recipes "at your fingertips." The iPad version opens to a screen full of celebrity chefs' mug shots, including those of Rachael Ray, Bobby Flay, and 28 others. Tap on any face, and get a list of that chef's favorite recipes. There's no extra charge for the recipe-box function.

If you're missing ingredients, just tap to select the ones you need, and they'll be added to a shopping list you can call up when you get to the store. The app even has a built-in cooking timer, and a unit converter.

So you're cooking up a storm and suddenly realize you haven't got the banana the recipe calls for. What to do? Fire up Cooking, a free app for Apple and Android from Portable Knowledge L.L.C. Among other things, the app suggests ingredient substitutes. Replace that banana with boiled turnip mashed with sugar. I'm not making it up.

The advertising-supported app has more cooking sense than a room full of grandmothers, which is especially useful for kitchen newbies. It defines hundreds of potentially unfamiliar terms - such as giblets, what it means to papillote, and the difference between dredging and drizzling. And it bills itself as a "cooking app with absolutely no recipes."

Food Meter and Food Scanner, both apps subtitled "Good Food or Bad Food?" by Arawella Corp., use bar codes and a large database of restaurant menus to tell you whether that macaroni and cheese is going to nourish you or kill you.

Food Scanner is a $1.99 version that uses the iPad2 camera to scan bar codes. Food Meter is a free version that requires you to type bar-code numbers. Either way, the app gives you a quick look at nutritional information, and a score on a flashy meter to indicate whether an item is healthful.