I have very little experience with WordPress. I am exploring it as a potential solution for our needs.
I would like to implement an autocomplete search box (a bit like jQuery’s) where users could type, say, the name of an ingredient and jump automatically to that ingredient’s page. We would fill the possible values of the search box ourselves.
Is there such a plugin for WordPress or should implement this myself via Javascript? If I need to implement this myself, are there any tips/code examples available?
You could use the autocompleter plugin. It does exactly what you describe: it autocompletes half-typed tags and categories.
You’d just need to tag your recipes with their ingredients.