Hypothetically speaking, if there were a robot that scanned the ingredients in your fridge and reported the easiest recipe possible based on that food, it would be the best invention ever. Well, short of a robot that actually makes the recipe for you. We could call it GoogleMyFridge. It seems to me like something Google would want in on.

Unfortunately, there is no such robot, because 2015 is seriously behind on futuristic technology. What we have instead: websites that return recipes based on ingredients you report. It’s a little extra legwork, but one site, Supercook.com, was among TIME magazine’s 50 best websites of 2014. That has to be a good sign, right?

This morning, I couldn’t think of any good way to get pecans, potatoes and milk to taste good on a bagel, so I decided to give Supercook a try. It was early and I didn’t want to read a lot of instructions, so I just started adding things to the ingredient list on the left side of the Web page, hoping for the best.

It took a while to get used to the website categories. For example, “Quick and Easy” tended to return “recipes” for icing and easy-peel garlic cloves. Which is great if you’re into iced garlic, but terrible if you ever want to go on dates.

So I tried the “Breakfast” category, which suggested actual food, but revealed another glitch in the system: To Supercook, breakfast is absolutely dependent on eggs. I didn’t have eggs because Commons Shop had run out. But it’s nice to know that Supercook will tell you if you’re close to having the right ingredients.

Trying to break the website’s egg obsession, I kept adding ingredients, hoping for a different result. It eventually transpired that Supercook is British, or at least quite fond of its scones.

I love scones, but they take forever to make. Nobody wants that hassle before they’ve even brewed their morning coffee. Especially not when they started off their day fighting with an obstinate website.

In the end, I got to this basic hash browns recipe. Feeling like going back to bed and really wishing for a robot, I went with it. The hash browns were good; my coffee was even better.

I went back to the Supercook site after I finished eating and discovered there’s an ingredient exclusion tool in the header that allows you to rule out gluten, dairy or specific things — like eggs — from your search results.

Definitely should have read the instructions.

The Verdict:

Supercook could be useful for hapless college students, but you should wait to familiarize yourself with it until you have time to experiment.