Cookie craving inspired Web site

The recipe: Seattle-based Allrecipes.com.

Roots: Created in 1997 by Emergent Media when Emergent co-founder Tim Hunt had trouble finding his favorite cookie recipes on the Internet.

Technique: Provides a one-stop, online recipe and cooking resource for busy home cooks. The company makes money by selling advertising and sponsorships to the consumer packaged-goods industry, selling branded cookbooks and licensing technology.

Key ingredients: Bill Moore, 45, chief executive and president, and Hunt, 43, the chief technical officer and senior vice president of product development. Mix in 38 employees in Seattle and sales offices in New York, Chicago, Denver and on the West Coast. Funding comes from angel investors and small funds across the country.

The pantry: More than 30,000 recipes with more than 1 million reviews are expected to draw 8 million visitors during the coming holiday season. The site also stocks recipe-scaling aids, nutritional data, metric conversion, automatic shopping lists and free "recipe boxes."

Provenance: Moore joined the company in 1999 after 14 years in the food business, including restaurants, Larry's Markets and Starbucks, where he conceived and launched the Frappuccino. He also has 11 years of tech experience with CD-ROM consumer software and Internet products at Sierra Online.

Secret sauce: The Allrecipes.com community. Home cooks worldwide built the site by submitting their favorite recipes and cooking experiences, Moore said. "The cooks who come to Allrecipes.com aren't coming to romanticize recipe pictures, they're coming to find tried and tested recipes they can make for their families that night."

Salty, sour, sweet: Moore said Allrecipes.com survived the dot-com fallout by understanding that it needed a real business model, that rules weren't different for the Internet and by "not drinking the Internet Kool-aid."

Terroir: "Seattle is a melting pot of cultures and background," Hunt said. "Food is cultural and spans all borders. Flavors are becoming a fusion of many traditional cuisines combined as one. So Seattle is a great place to see the food trends."

Dessert: Profitable the past two years and growing at more than 40 percent year over year.

Bon appétit: Moore's favorite recipe is "Awesome Slow-Cooker Pot Roast." It's on Allrecipes.com.

— Brier Dudley