Recipes

A recipe is a dish made from foods. If you eat the same dish more than once, this saves time. You only tell Chow the ingredients one time when preparing a dish instead of each time you eat it.

For example, imagine baking a lasagna. If you tell Chow the ingredients while preparing it, e.g. “8 oz tomato sauce”, “1 lb beef”, and “1 package noodles”, later in the week when you sit down to eat, you don’t have to log every ingredient.

Chow sums the calories and nutrients for each food in a recipe.

food ground-turkey "Ground turkey, 93% lean"
    112 g = 170 kcal 0 carb 8 fat 22 protein

food black-beans "Black beans, canned"
    1 can = 385 kcal 70 carb 1.5 fat 24 protein

food olive-oil "Olive oil"
    1 tbsp = 120 kcal 0 carb 14 fat 0 protein

container dutch-oven "Dutch oven" 2250 g

2026-09-27 recipe grandmas-chili "Grandma's chili"
    container dutch-oven
    weight 4250 g
    servings 6
    ground-turkey  454 g
    black-beans  2 can
    olive-oil  1 tbsp

2026-09-28 12:30  grandmas-chili  250 g
2026-09-29 19:00  grandmas-chili  1 serving
2026-09-30 13:10  grandmas-chili  0.25 recipe

Anatomy of a Recipe

The first line says the date you made the dish, the word recipe, a handle, and a name. The indented lines below can go in any order.

Ingredients

Each ingredient has a handle and a portion, written like an entry. An ingredient can be another recipe.

If any ingredient leaves out a nutrient, the dish’s total for it shows as “at least” rather than an exact amount.

Weight (Optional)

weight is what the finished dish weighs. A recipe with a container needs a weight.

Container (Optional)

container gives a name to the pot, pan, glassware, etc., that you weighed the dish in. Chow subtracts its weight from weight. A container has an id, a name, and a weight, e.g. container dutch-oven "Dutch oven" 2250 g.

Servings (Optional)

servings is how many servings the dish makes.

Logging a Recipe

You log a recipe by its handle, like a food.

For example, the chili above weighs 4250 g in a 2250 g container, so the dish is 2000 g. 250 g is an eighth of it.

Making a Dish Again

Each time you make a dish, you write a new recipe with a new handle and date. Editing an old recipe isn’t a good idea, since it changes every entry that logged it.

Chow treats recipes with the same name, ignoring case and extra spaces, as versions of the same dish.

Next

Set targets.