Food Tools

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Thirty calculators for a kitchen, and the two halves of every answer are marked

A recipe is arithmetic with tolerances in it, and the two halves are not the same kind of number. The flour in a seventy-per-cent dough is exact; how long that dough wants to rise is a rule of thumb about a living thing. Every tool here says which of the two it just gave you, because an exact-looking figure for something that is not exact is how a loaf comes out of the oven wrong.

There is no food database, and that is deliberate. A usable one is tens of megabytes, out of date the week it ships, and different for every country — and a small one is worse than none, because it answers confidently about the half it knows and silently omits the rest. These tools take the figures from the packet in front of you, which is the only source that describes what you are actually cooking.

A cooking time is a starting point and not a food-safety guarantee. A thermometer decides when meat is done; a clock only decides when to go and look. Every tool that gives a time gives the published safe internal temperature beside it, and says which of the two is the answer.

The kitchen arithmetic that is exact really is exact, and says so. Baker's percentages, brine concentrations, dilution by weight, alcohol by volume from two gravities and the cost of a portion are definitions rather than estimates. Where a figure is a convention — a density, a portion size, a party appetite — the tool names the convention and gives you the setting.

Brewing and drinks

Tea Brewing
Leaf, water temperature and steeping time for a kind of tea.

Dough and baking

Pizza Dough
Flour, water, salt and yeast for a number of pizzas of a size.

Yeast Converter
Fresh, active dry and instant, with the rise time that goes with them.

Heat and salt

Egg Boiling Time
A time from the size, the starting temperature and the altitude.

Pasta Portions
Dry pasta per person, the water and salt for it, and what it cooks to.

Brine Calculator
Salt and sugar for a wet or a dry brine, and how long to leave it.

Feeding a crowd

Planning and cost

Cost per Serving
What a plate costs, and the difference between margin and markup.

Shopping List
A list grouped the way a shop is laid out, and totalled.

Questions

Why is there no ingredient database?
Because a small one is worse than none. It would answer confidently about the hundred foods it knew and say nothing about the rest, and the visitor would never see which of the two had happened. Every tool here takes its figures from the packet, which is the only source that matches what is actually in the pan.
Which of these numbers are exact?
The definitions. A baker's percentage is a ratio of weights, a brine is a concentration, alcohol by volume follows from two gravities, a dilution is arithmetic and a cost per portion is division. Those are exact and are shown to the place they mean. A rising time, a portion size, a party appetite and a density are conventions, and every one of them says so on the result.
Do the tools handle a pasted list?
Yes — most of them are built for one. Paste a recipe, a shopping list or a week of meals one item to a line, with the numbers after the name, and the tool reads every line and says on any line it could not read what was wrong with it.
Do they work on a phone?
Yes. The whole interface lays out from a phone held upright to a desktop, which matters more here than in most of these applications: the place you actually read a recipe is a kitchen worktop.