How to Scale a Recipe
April 13, 2012
•Le Cordon Bleu
•Chicago
• 0 Comments
How to Scale a Recipe
You are having a dinner party for eight people – a real fancy affair that’ll taste like a graduate of a Chicago culinary school cooked it for you. As you are writing down the ingredients for your main course, you notice that the recipe only serves six. What do you do now?
Simply double everything and deal with the leftovers after the guests leave? Make the recipe as is and serve larger portions of bread and veggies? Or do you figure out a way to purchase the exact amount of ingredients and scale the recipe for your eight guests?
If you chose either of the first two choices, then this article is for you. Even if you chose the third option, you still may learn something by reading along.
What Is Scaling?
Scaling is when you adjust the amount of ingredients for a dish up or down depending on how many people for whom you need to cook. Sometimes it’s a simple matter of doubling or halving a recipe, but other times it can get pretty complicated. Have you ever tried to halve an egg?
Conversion Factor
The simplest way to scale a recipe is to determine what its conversion factor is. To do that, just divide the desired number of servings by the original number of servings. Sound complicated? Don’t worry. It isn’t. You don’t have to be a math whiz or Chicago culinary school grad to learn it. Let’s look at an example.
You have a 10-serving (original number of servings) recipe that you want to scale down for six (desired number of servings) dinner guests.
That’s 6 ÷ 10 or .6. Your conversion factor is .6. Simply multiply each ingredient by .6 to get the exact amount for the recipe.
Do the same to scale up. For 12 servings of your 10-serving recipe, divide 12 by 10 to get a conversion factor of 1.2. Multiple your ingredients by 1.2 to make the recipe for 12 servings.
These conversions will sometimes result in unusual amounts for your ingredients. To simplify those measurements use a cooking units conversion tool. Many cookbooks will have conversion charts, and there are numerous versions available on the Web. The easiest one may be Google’s built in calculator function. Simply type in the conversion you want, say ‘ounces in a gallon’ and Google does the rest. That’s 128 U.S. fluid ounces, by the way.
Conversion Caveats
You may not cook as much as a cooking school student, but with a little practice you’ll catch on to how to scale a recipe. There are few things you’ll need to learn first:
- It’s a good idea to avoid increasing the size of a recipe by more than a factor of four, especially with baked goods like cakes. The chemistry of the ingredients starts to get a little weird at that size and creates unintended results.
- While doubling a recipe is an easy conversion, it doesn’t always work for all ingredients, especially with alcohol, seasonings, baking powder, and baking soda. These ingredients are either strongly flavored or can have unintentional affects on your final product. A good rule for these ingredients is to use only 1.5x the amount when doubling a recipe.
- Also, you should never double the cooking temperature or cooking time of an over-sized recipe. The results would be catastrophic. Instead, simply add about 25 degrees to the temperature to ensure even heating. Time is a trickier thing, as it depends upon altitude, your cookware, and your oven/range. Start by cooking according to the time for the original recipe. Check for doneness at the end of that time, and add additional increments of five minutes, if necessary.
Now back to that half of an egg. Don’t worry about it when scaling down a recipe that calls for one egg. Simply use the whole thing and forget about the precise amount of half of an egg. Recipes that require eggs don’t require that kind of precision.
Finally, sometimes your conversions will create difficult to work with amounts – like 28.6 ounces. Don’t sweat it. You can simply round off your numbers to get to more workable amounts. In this case, use 28 or 29 ounces. Both will work.
This article is presented by Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Chicago. Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Chicago offers culinary arts and pâtisserie and baking training programs in Chicago, Illinois. To learn more about the class offerings, please visit Chefs.edu/Chicago for more information.
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