Path expression in MarkLogic cts.search

I have the impression that the XQuery and the Server-side JavaScript APIs in MarkLogic are largely equivalent. But there seems to be a big difference in cts:search vs cts.search. In cts:search, I am able to specify an element to be searched and returned. For example, I can retrieve all recipes using cinnaomon as ingredient from a recipe book:

cts:search(//recipe, cts:element-word-query(xs:QName('ingredients'), 'cinnamon'))

Whereas cts.search doesn't accept a path expression and will return the whole recipe book document:

cts.search(cts.elementWordQuery(xs.QName('ingredients'), 'cinnamon'))

The same question has been asked in MarkLogic mailing list but I don't see an answer there: https://developer.marklogic.com/pipermail/general/2015-March/016508.html

Below is a minimal example:

<book>
  <recipe>
    <ingredients>cinnamon, peppermint</ingredients>
    <instruction/>
  </recipe>
  <recipe>
    <ingredients>sugar, peppermint</ingredients>
    <instruction/>
  </recipe>
  <recipe>
    <ingredients>coconut oil</ingredients>
    <instruction/>
  </recipe>
</book>

The xquery would be:

cts:search(//recipe, cts:element-word-query(xs:QName('ingredients'), 'cinnamon'))

and the response:

<recipe>
  <ingredients>cinnamon, peppermint</ingredients>
  <instruction></instruction>
</recipe>

Solution

Building up on DALDEI's answer you can use the search api to return only recipe elements:

const search = require('/MarkLogic/appservices/search/search');

let options = fn.head(xdmp.unquote(`
<options xmlns="http://marklogic.com/appservices/search">
  <return-results>true</return-results>
  <searchable-expression>//recipe</searchable-expression>
  <extract-document-data>all</extract-document-data>
  <additional-query>
    <cts:element-word-query xmlns:cts="http://marklogic.com/cts">
      <cts:element>ingredients</cts:element>
      <cts:text xml:lang="en">cinnamon</cts:text>
    </cts:element-word-query>
  </additional-query>
</options>`)).root;

search.search("", options)        // returns a Sequence of search:response
  .toArray()[0]                   // get the first result
  .getElementsByTagName("recipe") // find all recipe elements

This code returns a NodeList of recipe elements. The result for your provided book would be this single element node:

<recipe xmlns:search="http://marklogic.com/appservices/search">
  <ingredients>cinnamon, peppermint</ingredients>
  <instruction/>
</recipe>

This is not really a nice solution (in terms of quick and easy) but it might work as a workaround.

I also tried using the jsearch functions but didn't find a way to pass a searchable-expression parameter. I might have missed that because I have not used this alot yet.