Creating a custom recipe is a great way to quickly enter meals into your diary. For example, if you often eat a breakfast consisting of quick oats, raisins, brown sugar, cinnamon, and milk, it can be time consuming to always enter all five of these ingredients every day. Instead, you can create a 'My Breakfast Porridge' recipe which contains these ingredients. Once created, you can just search and add your recipe to your diary.
If you have eaten your meal with another Cronometer user, you can create one recipe and share it with your friend.
You can create recipes two ways:
1. Manually create a new recipe.
2. Import a recipe from a website.
1. Steps to Create a New Custom Recipe
Foods>Custom Recipe>"+ Add Recipe"
Enter a name for your recipe
ADD ingredients from the '+ ADD INGREDIENTS'
Add a Serving Size
Determine the serving sizes of your recipe as either servings based or weight based.
Servings Based
If your recipe can be divided into a set number of servings, e.g. 1 full pizza provides 8 servings.
Then you should select Servings Based.
You can then enter the serving size as a fraction of the full recipe, e.g. 8 slices of pie per recipe.
Weight Based
If it is easier to portion your recipe based on weight you should select Weight Based.
The gram value will automatically default to the weight of the full recipe. You can choose to add additional serving sizes by using the + Add Serving Size button in the top left of the box.
Note 1 oz = 28.3 g
Add one or multiple serving sizes using the green + button. By default, the recipe will contain a Full Recipe serving for the complete ingredients. You can add additional serving sizes by choosing the green + button.
Add Ingredients
To add your ingredients, click on the "+" icon next to the "Ingredients" section. Remember to enter the appropriate serving size for each ingredient based on a full recipe
From here you will be able to search for the ingredient and add the serving size that matches your recipe.
-
If you have created a weight based recipe, ensure you have chosen ingredients with weight based serving sizes. If you have chosen an ingredient with a volumetric serving size, you may encounter problems when entering your recipe into your diary.
Set Cooked Recipe Weight
When you prepare a recipe, water lost during cooking may cause the weight of your final recipe to be different than the sum of the ingredients you added in Cronometer. Set a cooked recipe weight to accurately log your portions in your diary.
After cooking, weigh your recipe and click the green text 'Set Cooked Recipe Weight' to enter in the actual weight of your recipe.
This will open a dialog where you can enter or edit the cooked weight. Click Save.
Add notes to the recipe
This is a great place to add cooking instructions! Drag the bottom right corner to make this area larger to view more text.
Save Changes>Add to Diary
Once you have finished, ensure you have saved your recipe! It will now populate your custom recipes list on the left hand side of the foods tab.
You can now search for your recipe by name and add it to your diary just like any other food. To search for a custom food or recipe more easily, search using the Custom tab in the Search dialogue.
Deleting a Custom Recipe
To delete or retire your recipe, open the recipe in the Foods tab. Choose the settings button in the top right corner of your page. Deleting your recipe will remove the recipe from your foods tab and all diary entries of that food. You can retain any diary entries while removing the recipe from your search results by choosing to retire your recipe
You can also use this Settings Menu to create a copy of the recipe to edit, or export your recipe to a CSV or JSON file.
2. Import a Recipe
Upload a recipe with ingredients and instructions from a website.
In the Foods tab, select the Custom Recipes tab. Click the Import Recipe button at the top of the screen.
Copy the website url. Click the Paste URL button in the dialog, then click Import.
We’ll upload the recipe name, serving size and ingredients. Look over the details and make any adjustments you’d like.
Manually Paste Ingredients
If you have any trouble importing a recipe or you'd like to add Grandma Jane's recipe she emailed you, copy the ingredients list and paste them in the Manual Ingredient Submission box. Use the Paste Ingredients button, or manually paste them directly in the box.
Enter one ingredient on a line so we can match them for you.
Add instructions in the Notes field. Expand the field in the bottom right corner to see all the recipe instructions.
Click on an ingredient to compare with the original ingredient called for in the recipe, as well as the serving size to validate the match. The importer attempts to read the webpage to find ingredients and map them to foods in our database. They aren't 100% perfect, so review is recommended before saving. We are learning from your corrections to improve ingredient matching through machine learning.
If we are unable to find a match for an ingredient or serving size we’ll mark the item to bring it to your attention. You must resolve these items before you can save your recipe.
Click an item to replace the ingredient or edit the serving size. Easily compare the original ingredient and serving size highlighted in blue when you are making adjustments.
When your recipe is complete, click the Save button at the top of the screen.