Skip to content

Recipe Scaler

A recipe for four, a table of ten. Paste the ingredient list, say how many it serves and how many you need, and read the new amounts in cooking fractions instead of doing the sums line by line.

Multiply every amount by

× 2.5

  • 5 cups all-purpose flour
  • 3 3/4 tsp baking powder
  • 1 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1 7/8 cup sugar
  • 5 eggs
  • 2 1/2 cup milk
  • 5-7 1/2 tbsp butter
  • Bake 25 minutes at 350°FNo amount at the start

How it works

  1. Paste the ingredient list, one ingredient per line, with the amount first, such as 1 1/2 cups flour.
  2. Enter the servings the recipe makes and the servings you want.
  3. Read the scaled list. Lines that were left as written say why.
  4. Copy the new list into your notes or your shopping list.

What people use it for

  • Cooking for a crowd

    Turn a family recipe into a party batch without a calculator.

  • Cooking for one

    Shrink a recipe for six down to a single portion and see which amounts become awkward.

  • Baking in a different tin

    Scale a cake by the ratio of the two tin sizes to keep the same depth.

Questions

Which part of a line is scaled?
Only the amount at the start of the line: 2, 1.5, 1/2, 1 1/2, ½ or a range such as 2-3 or 1 to 2. A figure further along, such as the size of a can in 2 (14 oz) cans tomatoes, is not touched, and neither is a line that does not start with an amount.
Why were my oven temperature and times left alone?
Doubling a recipe does not double the heat. A line whose first figure is followed by °, degrees, minutes, hours, seconds or % is kept as written. Cooking times often change a little with the batch size, but not in proportion, so check the dish rather than trusting a multiple.
How are results rounded?
Amounts close to a half, third, quarter or eighth are shown as that fraction, for example 1 1/2 or 2/3. Anything else is shown with up to two decimals. Units are never converted: 3 tsp stays 3 tsp.
What does it not know?
It cannot tell that some things do not scale evenly, such as salt, spices, raising agents or the size of the pan. Taste and adjust. At most 500 lines of 300 characters are read.