[FAQ] Can Computer Cuisine Deluxe scale recipes for different servings?

[MikeM]

Q: Can Computer Cuisine Deluxe scale recipes for different servings?

No, Computer Cuisine Deluxe does not automatically scale recipes.
This is not an oversight but rather a conscious decision.

There’s no way for Computer Cuisine Deluxe (or any other recipe-based software application) to automatically scale ingredient information for you unless the ingredients input areas were set to strictly accept only each ingredient line-by-line and with strict numerical formatting.

This would kill the convenience of being able to drag and drop or copy/paste large blocks of text into the ingredients field.

Since recipes come from a variety of sources, many times these recipes are inconsistent. Some use fractions, some use decimals, etc. There are recipe applications that do offer scaling, but they either require that you enter in each ingredient line by line in a rigid format, or they can be inaccurate when scaling items like fractions, pints, gallons, etc.

As an alternative, you can always simply duplicate a popular recipe and manually scale the ingredients in Computer Cuisine Deluxe, setting the new number of servings in the pull-down menus.

Then, in your List menu, you can click on the tab to list by servings and jump to only recipes that serve the number of people you are catering to. This gives you the best of both worlds.

Please also note that in baking, numerical scaling can seriously alter the recipe and it's not advised.

Entering recipe data needs to be quick, easy and comfortable. Converting the entire recipe system to one that offers scaling but requires ingredients to be entered in line by line manually and then a separate field for the numerical portion of each line would simply be a headache.