Recipe Creator

Create recipes, suggest meals based on available ingredients, handle dietary restrictions, and provide basic nutritional information.

When to Use

• User wants a recipe for a specific dish
• User has ingredients and wants meal ideas
• User needs recipes for dietary restrictions (vegan, gluten-free, keto)
• User wants to scale a recipe up or down
• User wants meal prep or batch cooking plans

When NOT to Use

• Detailed meal planning with fitness goals (use meal-planner skill)
• Health data analysis (use personal-health skill)

Methodology

Output — Visual Recipe Card, Not Markdown

Do not output recipes as plain markdown text. Instead, build a beautiful, interactive recipe card as an HTML artifact displayed on the canvas. The recipe card should look like a polished cooking app (think Paprika, NYT Cooking, or Bon Appétit).

Recipe Card Requirements

1. Generated hero image — Use

   generateImage

   to create a photorealistic, appetizing hero image of the finished dish. Place it at the top of the card. Style: overhead shot or 45-degree angle, natural lighting, on a styled surface with minimal props.

2. Serving size adjuster — Include a serving size selector (buttons or +/- stepper) that dynamically recalculates all ingredient quantities in real time. Store the base recipe quantities in JavaScript and multiply on change:

// Store base recipe for N servings
const baseServings = 4;
const ingredients = [
  { name: "chicken breast", qty: 2, unit: "lbs" },
  { name: "olive oil", qty: 2, unit: "Tbsp" },
  // ...
];

function updateServings(newServings) {
  const ratio = newServings / baseServings;
  ingredients.forEach(ing => {
    const scaled = ing.qty * ratio;
    // Display with smart fractions (¼, ½, ¾) for common amounts
  });
}

1. Card layout — Structure the visual card with:

   • Hero image (full-width, 16:9 or 4:3)
   • Recipe title (large, styled)
   • Metadata bar: prep time, cook time, total time, difficulty, servings adjuster
   • Ingredients list (left column or collapsible section) — checkboxes so users can tick off items
   • Step-by-step instructions (numbered, with visual/audio cues highlighted)
   • Nutrition facts panel (per serving, updates with serving size)
   • Notes section: storage, substitutions, allergen flags

2. Styling — Clean, modern, food-magazine aesthetic. Use warm tones, generous whitespace, readable serif or clean sans-serif fonts. Mobile-friendly layout. No cluttered sidebars.

Place the recipe card on the canvas as an iframe (1280x900 or similar).

"What Can I Make?" Logic

Think in formula + flavor profile, not recipe lookup:

1. Bucket ingredients: protein / starch / veg / aromatic / fat / acid
2. Match a base formula (stir-fry, braise, grain bowl, frittata, soup, sheet-pan roast)
3. Assign a flavor direction based on what's in the pantry (soy+ginger+sesame → East Asian; cumin+lime+cilantro → Mexican; lemon+garlic+oregano → Mediterranean)
4. Every savory dish needs fat + acid + salt to taste finished. If it's "flat," it's missing acid 90% of the time — add lemon, vinegar, or pickled something
5. Rank suggestions by fewest missing ingredients

Ratios — Cook Without a Recipe

From Ruhlman's Ratio (the CIA-derived reference). All by weight, not volume — this is why they work:

Thing	Ratio	Notes
Bread dough	5 flour : 3 water (+yeast, salt 2% of flour wt)	Hydration % = water/flour. 60% = sandwich loaf, 75%+ = ciabatta/focaccia
Pasta dough	3 flour : 2 egg	~100g flour per person
Pie dough	3 flour : 2 fat : 1 water	Fat cold, water iced. Overmix = tough
Cookie	1 sugar : 2 fat : 3 flour	Base for shortbread → choc chip → anything
Biscuit/scone	3 flour : 1 fat : 2 liquid
Muffin/quick bread	2 flour : 2 liquid : 1 egg : 1 fat
Pancake	2 flour : 2 liquid : 1 egg : ½ fat	Thinner = crêpe (drop the leavening)
Vinaigrette	3 oil : 1 acid	Mustard to emulsify. Salt in the acid first
Custard	1 part egg : 2 parts liquid	Crème brûlée, quiche filling, bread pudding base
Stock	3 water : 2 bones	By weight. Simmer, never boil
Brine	20 water : 1 salt (5% w/w)
Rice (stovetop)	1 rice : 1.5 water by volume	Less for jasmine, more for brown

Knowing the ratio > knowing a recipe. Same cookie ratio → swap butter for brown butter, add miso, change sugar to brown — infinite variations, predictable results.

Substitutions — With the Actual Conversion

Out of	Use	Conversion + caveat
Buttermilk	Milk + acid	1 cup milk + 1 Tbsp lemon juice or vinegar, sit 5 min
1 egg (binding)	Flax or chia	1 Tbsp ground + 3 Tbsp water, gel 5 min. Max 2 eggs' worth — beyond that it gets gummy
1 egg (leavening)	Aquafaba	3 Tbsp chickpea liquid. Whips like whites
Butter (baking)	Oil	Use 80% of butter weight (butter is ~80% fat, 20% water). Less browning
Butter (baking, low-fat)	Unsweetened applesauce	1:1, but cut other liquid slightly. Cakier texture
Heavy cream	Coconut cream (the solid part of the can)	1:1. Faint coconut taste in delicate dishes
Cake flour	AP flour	1 cup AP minus 2 Tbsp, replaced with 2 Tbsp cornstarch
Self-rising flour	AP + leavening	1 cup AP + 1½ tsp baking powder + ¼ tsp salt
Brown sugar	White + molasses	1 cup white + 1 Tbsp molasses
Wine (cooking)	Stock + acid	Equal vol stock + 1 Tbsp vinegar per cup
Fresh herbs	Dried	Use ⅓ the amount. Add early (dried needs heat to bloom)
Soy sauce	Tamari (GF) / coconut aminos	Tamari 1:1. Coconut aminos: use ~1.3× and add salt (it's sweeter, less salty)

Nutrition — Compute, Don't Guess

USDA FoodData Central (

fdc.nal.usda.gov

) — free API, no key needed for basic search. The authoritative macro/micro database.

# webFetch or requests

# Search: https://api.nal.usda.gov/fdc/v1/foods/search?query=chicken%20breast&api_key=DEMO_KEY

# Returns per-100g: kcal, protein, fat, carbs, fiber, plus micros

# Scale by actual gram weight, sum across ingredients, divide by servings

For quick estimates without the API: protein ~4 kcal/g, carbs ~4 kcal/g, fat ~9 kcal/g, alcohol ~7 kcal/g.

Gram conversions for common measures: 1 cup AP flour ≈ 125g; 1 cup sugar ≈ 200g; 1 cup butter ≈ 227g (2 sticks); 1 large egg ≈ 50g; 1 Tbsp oil ≈ 14g.

Best Practices

• Visual/audio cues over times — "onions translucent and soft" beats "5 min" (stove strength varies 2×). "Oil shimmers." "Garlic fragrant, ~30 sec." "Dough springs back slowly."
• Salt in layers — season at each stage, not all at the end
• Rest meat — 5 min for steaks, 15+ for roasts. Skipping this is the #1 reason home-cooked meat is dry
• Ingredients listed in order of use; prep notes inline ("1 onion, diced")
• Flag top-9 allergens: milk, egg, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soy, sesame

Limitations

• Nutrition is computed from generic USDA data — brand variance is real
• Baking ratios assume weight measurement; volume introduces 10-20% error
• Not medical dietary advice