MCP Ptitchef

What mcp-ptitchef does

mcp-ptitchef exposes Ptitchef recipe data to an MCP-compatible chat client. Ptitchef is a French cooking site whose user-published recipes may include ingredients, preparation steps, cooking and preparation times, cost, nutrition information, ratings, photographs, and translations.

The server supports the search and data extraction workflow from discovery to a specific recipe. You can inspect the site's ingredient-family hierarchy, search for a dish or ingredient, browse category pages or standing lists, and then pass a result's recipe ID to get_recipe. It also supports ingredient-based recipe discovery, serving adjustments, standalone ingredient scaling, and translation lookup.

How it works

The server communicates with the client over the standard MCP process setup. Recipe and category lookups access Ptitchef, while scale_ingredients performs ingredient-list calculations without making a site request. No account or API key is needed.

Category exploration starts with list_categories. Its results provide slugs and addresses that can be reused when browsing deeper categories. Search and browse responses include recipe or listing metadata such as IDs, titles, URLs, images, ratings, and counts where the site supplies them. Queries are expected to use French terms because Ptitchef is a French-language site.

Setup and configuration

Node.js 24 or later is required. The npm-based configuration runs the package with npx:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ptitchef": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-ptitchef"]
    }
  }
}

The same standard configuration is suitable for Claude Desktop and Cursor, and Claude Code can add it with claude mcp add ptitchef -- npx -y mcp-ptitchef. VS Code provides an installation link. A Docker option is also available; it uses an interactive container without a TTY and needs outbound HTTPS access to www.ptitchef.com. The downloadable MCP bundle includes its dependencies and requires neither npm nor a separate configuration file in clients that support bundles.

Tools and capabilities

• list_categories traverses Ptitchef's ingredient-family tree, optionally returning children beneath a family slug.
• search_recipes searches by dish or ingredient and returns recipe result metadata.
• browse_recipes reads category pages or the latest, top_rated, and most_viewed standing lists.
• search_by_ingredients finds recipes based on ingredients already available to the cook.
• get_recipe retrieves a recipe by ID and can adjust its quantities for a requested serving count.
• scale_ingredients rescales an ingredient list locally, without contacting Ptitchef.
• get_recipe_translations reports other languages in which a recipe was published.

Limitations and notes

Search terms are intended to be French. The normal workflow uses a result ID from a listing with get_recipe. Search responses can represent category results, free-text results, or manually curated guides, and their totals do not always have the same meaning. A single-page result may report more available items than it returns. Category pagination can also reject a page beyond the end or return the first page again, depending on the site's response.