ELR needs a canonical list of ingredients.
Allowing people to enter their own ingredients severely limits the usefulness of ELR. I can find 6 or 7 versions of the same flavor.
I took the time to enter my flavor stash, clicked to find recipes based on my stash, and came up with very few flavors. I had made several recipes already from this site and couldn’t even find them.
It’s to easy for people to add their own flavors that are just missed or duplicated versions of existing ones.
Is always running duplicate flavour searches and trying to remove duplicates.
Unfortunately I would imagine that not allowing people to put their own flavours in would seriously limit the usefulness of the site due to not knowing all flavour manufacturers across the world.
If you want to search for recipes etc I find it easier to search for a general flavour such as CUSTARD and this brings up all recipes that contain a form of custard in them.
Then fine tune the recipe by adapting it for your own flavours.
J
Yes, using the flavor list to find the most used flavors helps a lot, but the problem is that people are free to enter whatever they want in the flavor name. If you take your time to find the flavors with the most recipes, you’ll be alright.
I am going to fix this, but it will take a while, and it will restrict people in entering flavors, but this is a necessary sacrifice to get better data 
Daath, this is an AWESOME site and a real service to the DIY community. Although I visit other sites/groups ELR is my go-to for DIY.
I get your point about not allowing people to enter their own flavors.
I just love the ability to enter my flavor stash and click the What Can I Make button.