Where does Google get all of the information that they've started providing directly on their search results pages.

I assume that's a rhetorical question, aristotle?
:)

On Cnet they state that:

"Google says it culled many sources to get the most accurate, classic recipes that should produce the tastiest results." ~ [cnet.com...]

The only credit I've seen given for a variety of mixed drink queries is to Wikipedia for the definition. All the other information (main ingredients and portions), either links off to other Google pages or there are no links at all.

To Google webmasters are merely uncompensated packagers preparing information for Google to use with free distribution rights to profit from.

Goodness. And here I was, opening half a dozen different pages to look at an assortment of piņa colada recipes to pick the most appealing one. (By weird coincidence, this is really true. Last night it struck me that, having a can of crushed pineapple and several cans of coconut milk sitting around, well, obviously the thing to do was ...)

And if you search for something simpler (like beer or wine), Google will give you all the nutrition facts.

Neither beer , nor wine, are "simple"..

It's a short but interesting article. I find this part relevant:

The company's been paying attention to your search queries (yes, all of them) to see what people are looking for the most. Then, it cooks up new ways to give you that information without you needing to dig around for it. You can expect to see more search results like these in the future.

So these 'answers' are coming to all keywords. It would be pretty cool from a searcher's point of view to ask a question, for example:

The best places to visit in Europe

and in a carousel users could see a list of places with short but relevant descriptions along with pictures and a few popular itineraries. I would probably use this often (instead of having to go through many long articles on the subject). It would be useful to have a select box with fields like: Travel Time, Way of Transportation, Budget, Preferred Activities to come up with the best/personalized travel plan that could be forwarded to email or printed out. There could also be a checkbox: Suggested Itinerary; after selecting, users would be suggested only the recommended places (eg. having more than 4 stars based on data from all the travel reviews websites) to stay or visit. Advertisers (who have Adwords account) could then bid to be included in the 'Suggested Itinerary' listings.

There are many possibilities to make a frequent traveler like myself happy and Google answers/knowledge has a lot of potential :)

Oh, for heaven's sake. I am perfectly content to use the Knowledge Thingummy if I'm looking up something unambiguous and noncontroversial like the population of Nuuk. For everything else, it's just one more part of the SERP to ignore. Especially on mobiles, where it takes up a really disproportionate amount of screen space.

Neither beer, nor wine, are "simple".

In the search engine's mind, everything is simple, and questions containing words like "best" have one-paragraph answers.