Scaling a Home Recipe to Production Batches
Convert a home recipe to grams and baker's percentages, scale it to a target yield, and plan for the parts that don't scale in a straight line.
Sub-Recipes: A Recipe Within a Recipe
KitchenSync is recipe management software where any recipe can be an ingredient in another recipe. Build a dough, sauce or spice blend once, and its cost, nutrition and ingredients carry into every product that uses it.
Build once
Build the base as its own recipe
Make the dough, icing, spice mix or sauce as a recipe of its own. Then open the product that uses it, add the base as an ingredient and enter how much goes in. One base can go into as many products as you make from it.
Cost
The cost of the base rolls up
Each product is costed from the base's own ingredient prices. When the price of one ingredient in the base changes, every recipe that uses the base is costed again. If an ingredient in the base has no price, the product names it as missing, so a partial cost does not pass for a complete one. Recipe costing covers how the batch cost is worked out.
Nutrition
Nutrition rolls up with it
The nutrients in the base count toward the product in proportion to the amount you use. Change the base, by adding salt or swapping an oil, and the nutrition of every recipe that uses it follows. You edit one recipe, not every product that contains it.
Ingredient list
The ingredient list shows the components
On the product's ingredient list, a sub-recipe appears by name with its own ingredients in parentheses after it. The ingredient list generator can also list those components by weight among the other ingredients, without the sub-recipe's name. Either way, a customer reading the label sees what is in the base, not only what you call it.
Related posts
Cups to Grams: How Volume Measurements Skew Nutrition Math
A cup of flour can weigh 120 g or 160 g. How volume measuring throws off nutrition labels and food costs, and when a cup is close enough.
Frequently asked questions
What is a sub-recipe?
A sub-recipe is a recipe used as an ingredient in another recipe: a crust in a pie, a caramel in a bar, a spice blend in a sauce. Some tools call them nested recipes or recipes within recipes.
If I change a sub-recipe, do I have to update the recipes that use it?
No. A change to the sub-recipe reaches every recipe that uses it. Their cost, nutrition and ingredient lists are worked out from the sub-recipe as it is now.
Are sub-recipes available on the free plan?
Yes. Using a recipe inside another recipe works on every plan, including Free.
Related documentation
Build the base once, use it everywhere
Add a dough, sauce or spice blend to any recipe. Its cost, nutrition and ingredients come with it. Start free.
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