Recipe Format

Recipes are plain text files using a simple Markdown format. You can write them by hand or use the graphical editor.

Basic structure

A recipe has four parts: a title, an optional description, front matter lines, and one or more steps.

# Pancakes

Fluffy weekend pancakes.

Category: Breakfast
Tags: quick, weekend
Makes: 12 pancakes
Serves: 4

## Mix the batter.

- Flour (all-purpose), 190 g
- Milk, 240 g
- Eggs, 2
- Butter, 2 tbsp: Melted.

Whisk dry ingredients. Add wet ingredients and stir until just combined.

## Cook the pancakes.

- Butter: A small pat per batch.

Pour about 60 g of batter per pancake onto a hot buttered pan.
Cook until bubbles form and edges look set. Flip and cook 1 minute more.

---

Try adding blueberries or chocolate chips to the batter.

Title

The first line is the recipe title, marked with #.

Description

An optional paragraph immediately after the title and before the front matter. Appears as a subtitle on the recipe page.

Front matter

Optional lines before the first step:

Line	Example	Notes
`Category:`	`Category: Breakfast`	One category per recipe. Overrides the category chosen when creating.
`Tags:`	`Tags: quick, vegetarian`	Comma-separated. Letters and hyphens only. Stored lowercase.
`Makes:`	`Makes: 12 pancakes`	What the recipe produces. Used for nutrition scaling.
`Serves:`	`Serves: 4`	Number of servings. Used for per-serving nutrition.

Makes: and Serves: can appear together if both make sense (e.g., “Makes: 1 loaf” and “Serves: 12”).

Steps

Each step starts with a ## heading. The heading text is a short label — it appears as a section header on the recipe page. The heading should end with a period.

Numbers in step text can be made scalable by appending *:

Divide the dough into 8* equal pieces.

When the recipe is scaled, 8* updates to reflect the new quantity. See Scaling for details.

Ingredients

Ingredient lines start with - . The format is:

- Name, quantity: prep note

Name — the ingredient name. Matched against the ingredient catalog for grocery tracking.
Quantity — optional. Examples: 190 g, 2 tbsp, 1-2, ½ cup. Unicode fractions (½, ¾, ⅓) are valid. Ranges (1-2 eggs) express a minimum–maximum amount.
Prep note — optional. Appears in smaller text below the ingredient line.

Examples:

- Butter                          ← name only
- Flour (all-purpose), 190 g      ← name + quantity
- Eggs, 2                         ← name + count
- Butter, 2 tbsp: Melted.         ← name + quantity + prep note

Quantities from multiple recipes that use the same ingredient are combined on the grocery list. “Flour, 190 g” in two recipes becomes one entry with 380 g total.

An optional section after a --- horizontal rule at the end of the recipe. Good for notes, sources, and variations. Rendered as plain Markdown.

Cross-references

You can embed another recipe’s steps or link to it from prose. See Cross-references for details.