Everyday Cooking

Ingredient scale calculator

Recipe serves
You want to serve
Amount of one ingredient
Scaled amount 375
4 → 6 servings, ×1.5×
Scaling factor 1.5×
As a percentage 150 %
As a cup fraction 375
Half the original 125
Double the original 500
Quantities scale · time and pans do not

Ingredients scale; cooking does not. Doubling a cake batter does not double the baking time — it adds perhaps a third, and the tin size matters more than the clock. Doubling a stew barely changes the simmer. Salt and strong spices often want slightly less than the factor suggests, and yeast in a large batch works faster because the dough holds its own heat. Scale the quantities here, then use judgement on the method.

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320 × 100

Scaling factor is target servings divided by original servings. Going from 4 to 6 is a factor of 1.5, so 250 g becomes 375 g. Apply the same factor to every ingredient, then adjust the method by judgement.

How to scale a recipe

1 Enter the servings the recipe makes and the number you want.
2 Enter each ingredient amount in turn to get the scaled figure.
3 Keep the same units throughout.
4 Adjust cooking time and pan size separately — they do not scale with the factor.

Pan size is the constraint people forget. Doubling a cake and baking it in the same tin gives a batter twice as deep, which burns at the edge before the middle sets. Two tins is almost always the answer for cakes; for a traybake, a tin with double the area. For anything cooked in a pan on the hob, doubling the quantity in the same pan means the food steams rather than browns, because the surface area available for evaporation has not changed.

Questions

Multiply every ingredient by two. Cooking time increases far less, and pan size usually has to change.

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300 × 250
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