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Scaling a recipe is multiplication — but cooking is not. Ingredients that carry structure (flour, stock, vegetables) scale linearly and happily. Ingredients that carry flavor — salt, spices, chilies, alcohol — do not: a 3× batch usually needs only about 2× the salt, added gradually.
Practical catering wisdom: scale the recipe, then taste the batch before service. Evaporation, pan surface area and hold time all shift as volumes grow, so liquids may reduce differently than your multiplication predicts.
Printing this as a prep list keeps the batch consistent between cooks — the scale factor and every scaled quantity go on one clean page.
Keep going with these tools — they build on this calculation: Menu Pricing Calculator, Food Cost Percentage Calculator, Prime Cost Calculator and Tip Out Calculator. When your prices look right, print the menu with the Menu Maker — free templates, PDF & PNG. Want us to set the whole system up for you? Ask about concierge setup.
Structure ingredients do — flour, stock, vegetables. Aromatics and seasoning (salt, garlic, spices, chili, alcohol) scale sub-linearly: scale them at about two-thirds of the factor and adjust to taste.
Weigh one serving of the original recipe first, then scale by weight. Weight scales perfectly; cup measurements compress error, especially for flour where packing varies.
Bread and doughs scale well by weight. Cakes and custards are more sensitive — scale by weight, keep pan depth similar, and expect bake time, not temperature, to change.