A personal sommelier, a multi oven timer and a scanner that reveals how much sugar is in your snack: The apps that EVERY foodie should have on their phone

• e-mail

Gone are the days when the glossy cookbook was king.

Now the old tomes are left to gather dust on the shelf, as a whopping 67 per cent of people use a computer, tablet or smartphone while cooking, according to a Good Food Nation survey.

But with hundreds of food and drink apps to choose from, which ones are really worth downloading?

BBC Good Food magazine has named the best apps that everyone should have on their phone if they consider themselves a foodie. 

FOR BEING SMART IN THE KITCHEN 

Good Food magazine have revealed the ultimate guide to foodie apps on smartphones that everyone with an interest in food and drink should download

Thyme (left) is a multi oven timer designed for cooking with, while The Food Assembly (right) allows you to order produce fresh from a local farm

Smartphones come with calculators, stopwatches and alarms as standard, but specialist cooking apps make those functions easier to use, giving you more time to concentrate on your sauces and seasonings.

Thyme (free): We've seen bakers struggle with multiple timers on the Great British Bake Off and now the devices have been turned into a convenient app. 

Thyme is nicely designed, with four hobs and an oven timer on one screen, alleviating your stress with multiple countdowns at a glance. Once you’ve mastered timings, MasterChef is but an application form away.

Recipe Convert Free (free) for Android: Multiplication and division is the last thing you want to be doing while holding a wooden spoon – these two recipe calculators let you convert between units, and scale quantities up and down without raising your blood pressure. 

They’re particularly useful if some of your favourite recipes use American cup measurements. 

FOR WINE KNOW-HOW

Both Vivino Wine Scanner (left) and Delectable Wines (right) show you user reviews of wines after you've taken a picture of a wine bottle and uploaded it to the app

A few apps try to play the role of sommelier, but only two are really worth downloading.

Delectable Wines (free) or Vivino Wine Scanner (free): Both apps are built around the idea of uploading a picture of the label and giving you user reviews in return (and both apps have pretty comprehensive libraries). 

Delectable is more geared to the wine buff (with editor’s picks and lists of 'trending' wines) but Vivino’s sheer number of users makes its average star ratings very useful. These apps will never beat good advice from someone in the know, but they’re more than handy for making spur-of-the-moment choices.

FOR EATING OUT 

If you look up your favourite restaurants online, you’ll generally find contradicting reviews – so who should you believe?

Yelp (free) or Foursquare (free): Both these apps encourage you to 'check in' when you’re out and about, and as a result are viewed suspiciously by the privacy conscious. 

But you can benefit from the opinions of other users without sharing your location, and recommendations are generally more useful than that of Zomato (which claims that you’ll 'never have a bad meal' if you use it – quite some boast). Both Yelp and Foursquare give handy lists of nearby dining options, sorted by rating, price, distance and cuisine.

OpenTable (free): This app has online booking sewn up in the UK. A Google search from your phone’s web browser for any participating restaurant will display a ‘Find a table’ button, which then opens the app and confirms your booking in a couple of taps. You can’t choose your table, so if you want something special, follow up with a call.

FOR LOCAL PRODUCE

The Food Assembly (free) for iOS only: This is worth a look if you’re keen to buy locally and support producers in your area. It pools local demand for organic vegetables, cheese and other produce, then places a collective order with nearby farms. 

This food is delivered each week at an appointed time to your local ‘assembly’.

FOR SAVING MONEY

Food Maestro (left) reveals what you can and can't eat if you tell it what food intolerances you have, while Good Fish Guide (right) is an award-winning app that reveals which restaurants stock sustainably-caught fish

The online food shop is a habit that millions of us have picked up. It’s part of a more general cultural shift from going out shopping, to waiting for stuff to show up at your door. You may miss the ability to browse shelves and examine produce, but sometimes the convenience makes up for it... and you can price-compare from the sofa.

mySupermarket (free): This is an essential download for the price conscious – it immediately tells you if your shopping basket would work out cheaper with a different supermarket, allowing you to instantly switch your allegiance and get more for your money.

FOR BEING HEALTHIER

Your phone can’t actually prise you off the sofa and into a healthier lifestyle, but it can give you the kind of information that will allow you to help yourself.

Change4Life Sugar Smart (free): Sugar Smart is brought to us by Jamie Oliver and Sustain, an organisation campaigning for better food and farming. It focuses on sugar consumption and does a good job of revealing the sugar content in your kids’ fizzy pop. All you do is scan the barcode.

FoodMaestro (free): Developed in partnership with Guy’s & St Thomas’ Hospital Trust, this allows you to make a profile around your food intolerances or special dietary requirements, and then tells you what you can and can’t eat. It also has a barcode scanner for unlisted products. 

FOR GOURMET DELIVERIES

For the full feature, see the June issue of BBC Good Food now

Hungryhouse or Just Eat (both free): These are the two main takeaway apps in the UK, with both offering one-click payment and storage of all your old orders for easy retrieval and reorder. This is wonderfully convenient, but can make for slightly unadventurous takeaway habits.

Deliveroo (free): Deliveroo's army of couriers has become a familiar sight in towns, and the company prides itself on striking up new partnerships with restaurants that you wouldn’t imagine offer takeaways. 

UberEATS and Amazon have recently launched similar services in London and are planning expansion, while Quiqup and Jinn (again, London only for now) will pick up literally anything for you and bring it to your door, be it an urgently needed artichoke or a replacement for a broken meat thermometer.

FOR SUSTAINABILITY

Good Fish Guide (free): This award-winning app from the Marine Conservation Society is a beautiful guide to the sustainability of various fish, along with ratings for various restaurants in your area.

For the full feature, see the June issue of BBC Good Food now.