One Pot, Different Portions: Audit a Recipe Before Logging It

Start with a name that includes the state

“Lentils, 200 g” is not enough to reproduce a meal entry. Were they weighed dry, cooked, or drained from a can? A nutrition value per 100 g is useful only when the quantity uses the matching basis. The same check applies to rice, meat, canned vegetables and sauces.

Keep three things together: the ingredient’s identity, its stated nutrition basis and the grams actually used on that basis. If the label describes an as-sold product, do not silently apply it to a cooked weight. If a database entry describes cooked food, do not use it for a dry weight because the name looks close.

This is a bookkeeping problem before it is an AI problem. A confident ingredient match can still produce an unsuitable calculation if the quantity refers to another state. Use the AI meal-estimate checklist to verify identity and units, and the Label Decoder to inspect the declared serving basis.

Use the finished batch to allocate a portion

Imagine a fictional ingredient ledger containing 3,000 kcal and 160 g protein. After preparation, the edible batch weighs 2,200 g, excluding the pot. A weighed 330 g portion is 15% of that batch. Under the explicit assumption that the ingredient totals remain in the edible mixture and are distributed uniformly, it receives 15% of each entered total.

Per 100 g: batch nutrient total ÷ finished batch grams × 100.
Per portion: batch nutrient total × portion grams ÷ finished batch grams.

Here, the per-100-g figures are about 136.36 kcal and 7.27 g protein. If the same assumed totals were spread through a 2,500 g batch, they would be 120 kcal and 6.4 g per 100 g. Adding water changes concentration; it does not create extra protein. Reducing water changes concentration in the other direction.

But final weight alone cannot tell us what was retained. Discarded oil, cooking liquid, bones, peel or food left in a pan can change the edible totals. Cooking can also change nutrient retention. The simple allocation above is not a laboratory analysis, and a precise scale does not remove those limitations.

FAO’s recipe-calculation procedure includes edible portions, cooking changes, refuse and retention adjustments before the final serving calculation. Our browser tool is deliberately narrower: it allocates the values you enter under stated assumptions. When you identify an unquantified discarded fat or liquid, it withholds the resolved nutrition result rather than pretending to know the loss.

Uniform mixing is another assumption. A bowl with most of the meat is not necessarily nutritionally equivalent to an equally heavy bowl of broth. Weigh separate components when their distribution matters; do not use one blended-pot fraction to claim an exact result for a visibly uneven serving.

Recipe cost and checkout cost answer different questions

Consider a separate, fictional shopping example: the recipe needs 650 g of an ingredient, and you already have 150 g of usable stock on the matching basis. You need to buy 500 g. The available pack is 400 g at €1.60. One pack is insufficient, so the shopping list needs two.

The allocated cost of the newly purchased amount used is €2.00: 500 ÷ 400 × €1.60. That is not the €3.20 paid today, nor the cost of the entire recipe: the pantry portion may also have a cost. Keeping these labels separate makes a budget useful rather than merely tidy.

Combine repeated ingredient rows only when they refer to the same product, basis and compatible entered nutrition and pack details. “Dry rice” and “cooked rice” are not one interchangeable shopping line. Two different brands or pack prices should remain distinct unless you deliberately select one consistent specification.

Open Recipe Yield & Grocery to try the editable, explicitly synthetic lentil-style or borscht-style pot. The templates demonstrate the ledger; they are not authoritative recipes, live prices or validated nutrient analyses. Your entries are calculated locally in the browser, without an AI API or account upload.

A repeatable recipe check

1. Record the ingredient state. Match dry, raw, cooked, drained or as-sold grams to the entered nutrition basis.
2. Keep missing fields visible. Complete the particular nutrient or cost column before interpreting its total.
3. Measure the edible batch. Subtract the vessel; record meaningful discarded ingredients separately.
4. Weigh the portion. Check that it does not exceed the batch and that a uniform-mixture assumption is reasonable.
5. Separate the two money totals. Whole-pack purchase cost is cash outlay. Proportional allocation is the cost assigned to an amount used.
6. Save the assumptions with the result. A copied receipt is more useful when it preserves basis, yield, missing values and limitations.

If calorie and macro totals still disagree, continue with the four calorie–macro checks. Do not “correct” an ingredient simply to force a simplified formula to match its label.