Create recipes

This guide shows how to create a recipe: pick or add ingredients, enter quantities and set recipe labels (e.g. vegetarian, minced food). Allergens and nutrition are calculated automatically from the ingredients (BLS food database).

Recipes are maintained by kitchen users (roles Kitchen Admin, Kitchen Team or Kitchen Management). Open recipes via Kitchen → Recipes.

A recipe is the building block. What lands on the plate and gets planned into the menu is a dish — a composition of one or more recipes. See Create dishes.

Overview

A recipe consists of:

  • Name and category (starter, main course, side dish, dessert, breakfast, snack),

  • base portions (adults) — the number of portions the ingredient quantities refer to,

  • a list of ingredients with quantity, unit and quantity basis (raw / cooked),

  • optional labels (dietary forms and consistency levels).

Nutrition and allergens are not entered by hand but calculated from the stored ingredients.

Open recipes and start a new recipe

How to: Open Kitchen → Recipes and click "+ New recipe" at the top right.

Result: The "New recipe" form appears with the fields Name, Category, Base portions (adults) and Label, plus an Ingredients section.

Kitchen recipe list
Figure 1. The recipe list with category, labels and calculated nutrition

Enter name, category and base portions

How to: Enter a name (e.g. "Potato goulash"), choose a category and set the base portions (adults) (default 10).

Result: The details are in the form; the base portions form the reference for the later per-portion nutrition calculation.

Pick or add ingredients

How to: In the Ingredients section, use the "Search ingredient…" field on each row. Your own ingredients appear immediately; the standard ingredients from the food database (BLS) are searched from 2 characters onward (matches are marked with "· Standard"). Then set quantity, unit (g, kg, ml, l, piece) and quantity basis (raw / cooked). Add another ingredient with "+ ingredient row". If an ingredient is missing entirely, use "+ new ingredient" to create your own one with name, category, unit, trimming-loss factor, cooking factor and allergens.

Result: Each selected ingredient appears as a row. For ingredients with incomplete data (missing nutrition or piece weight when the unit is "piece") the row shows a warning sign (⚠) with a hint.

The quantity basis distinguishes whether the entered quantity is raw / kitchen-ready or already cooked. The stored cooking factor of the ingredient converts raw quantities to cooked weight.

Assign a label (dietary form)

How to: In the Label field, tap the applicable attributes. Available are dietary forms (vegetarian, vegan, pork-free, halal, gluten-free, lactose-free) and consistency levels (soft food, pureed food, minced food).

Result: Active labels are highlighted. They later control which menu line of the menu plan the recipe fits into (e.g. a recipe labelled "vegetarian" is assigned to the Vegetarian menu line).

Portion groups (e.g. "children 1–3 years") are not stored on the individual recipe. They are kitchen-wide factors under Settings → Portion groups and scale the quantities during production. See Manage menu lines.

Review the calculation and save

How to: As soon as at least one ingredient is selected, the "Calculation" block appears (live from the ingredients). Review the values and then save the recipe with "Save".

Result:

Value Meaning

Total cooked weight

total weight at the base portions (cooked)

per portion

cooked weight per base portion

kcal per portion

energy per portion from the ingredients

per 100 g cooked

nutrition per 100 g of cooked meal

After saving, the recipe appears in the list — with category, labels, calculated allergens (or a "low-allergen" badge if none apply) and the nutrition columns.

If ingredient data is incomplete, the calculation flags this with ⚠ "Incomplete" and the values are lower bounds. Add missing nutrition or piece weights under Settings → Ingredients.

Why it works this way

Allergens are calculated, not typed. They follow from the recipe’s ingredients. A hand-maintained allergen field is correct exactly until the first recipe change — and with an allergen declaration, an outdated value is not a cosmetic flaw but a health risk. So you maintain the ingredients, and the labelling follows automatically.

Central recipes are copied, not linked. When you adopt a recipe from the central database you receive your own copy. Your menu plan must not change because someone else edited the original. If the source is revised later, you see a notice and decide for yourself whether to adopt the change.