Recipe Scaler

How to scale a recipe

1. Paste the ingredients into Ingredient list, one per line. English and French both work: “1 1/2 cups flour”, “250 g de farine”, “2 to 3 eggs”, “Salt: 1 tsp”.
2. Under Scale by, choose Number of servings and fill in Servings in the recipe and Servings wanted, or choose Multiplier and type 2, 0.5, 1.5 or even 1/3.
3. In Units, pick Keep the recipe’s units, Convert to metric (g, mL) or Convert to cups and spoons.
4. Check Cup and spoon size: US cup 236.6 mL, tbsp 14.8 mL for most American recipes, Metric cup 250 mL, tbsp 15 mL (Canada, Australia) for Canadian and Australian ones.
5. Press Scale recipe (the result also updates as you type), then copy the Scaled ingredients.

Titles, blank lines and anything without a quantity are copied unchanged, so you can paste a whole ingredient block. Lines scaled and Lines kept as is show what was recognised. Everything runs in your browser.

What the tool understands

• Quantities: whole numbers, decimals with a point or a comma (1.5 or 1,5), fractions (3/4), mixed numbers (1 1/2 or the American 1-1/2), fraction characters (½, 1¾) and ranges (“1 to 2”, “2-3”, “2 à 3”, “2 ou 3”). Both ends of a range are scaled.
• Units: tsp, tbsp, cup, fl oz, pint, quart, gallon, mL, cL, dL, L, mg, g, kg, oz, lb, sticks of butter and pinches, with their long English names and the French forms (c. à thé, c. à café, c. à soupe, tasse, pincée, livre, once…). “T” is read as a tablespoon and “t” as a teaspoon, as in older American cookbooks.
• Labels first: “Butter: 2 tbsp” or “Farine – 250 g” work too.
• Equivalents in parentheses: in “1 cup (250 mL) milk”, the parenthesis is scaled as well.

Sensible rounding

Nobody measures 0.333 of an egg or 2.67 teaspoons, so results are rounded the way a cook measures:

• Cups and spoons use fractions found on measuring cups and spoons: ⅛, ¼, ½, ¾ teaspoon; ¼, ⅓, ½, ⅔, ¾ cup. Small amounts move down a unit (half of 1 tbsp becomes 1 ½ tsp) and awkward amounts are split, for example “¼ cup + 2 tbsp” rather than “0.375 cup”.
• Grams and millilitres are rounded to 5 above 100, to 1 between 10 and 100 and to 0.5 below 10.
• Eggs and other items are shown as fractions. A fraction of an egg adds its weight: “⅓ large egg (≈ 17 g beaten egg; 1 large egg ≈ 50 g)”. Beat the egg and weigh what you need, or round up and accept a slightly richer batter.

Cups to grams

Flour and sugar are only converted between cups and grams when the line names a known ingredient. The tool uses the typical weights of one US cup from the King Arthur Baking ingredient weight chart: all-purpose and bread flour 120 g, whole wheat flour 113 g, granulated sugar 198 g, packed brown sugar 213 g, icing sugar 113 g, butter 227 g, cocoa 84 g, honey 336 g, maple syrup 312 g, chocolate chips 170 g, uncooked white rice 198 g, cornstarch 112 g, almond flour 96 g and table salt 288 g (6 g per teaspoon). With the metric cup, these are multiplied by 250 ÷ 236.6. The weights used are listed under Cup weights used for the conversion.

Liquids such as milk, water and oil become millilitres, not grams. Teaspoons and tablespoons are kept as spoons when converting to metric, since metric spoons (5 and 15 mL) are standard kitchen tools. Kosher salt and flaky salt are never converted because their weight per spoon varies too much between brands.