Shop'NCook User's Manual

The recipe editor

recipe editor

You reach the recipe editor by clicking on the Edit button of the toolbar of your cookbook or when adding a new recipe with the New button.

You should first work on the Recipe tab of the editor, then switch to the Shopping items tab to check the ingredients have been correctly linked to the database of grocery items.

Recipe tab

Typically, your recipes are automatically formatted by the recipe wizard. You need to open a recipe in the editor only when the wizard made mistakes or when you want to modify a recipe.

The ingredient lines are split in three parts: the quantity, the ingredient name and an optional comment.

When the wizard did not correctly recognized an ingredient, or wrongly recognized as ingredient the text of the recipe, select the line to correct and press on the magic wand button to fix it. If it is an ingredient that the software doesn't know, it will give you the possibility to add it to the dictionary so that it recognizes it the next time.

You can add ingredients by clicking on the + button of the toolbar and add new paragraphs by clicking on the A+ button.

To add a picture to the recipe, click on the "Set Picture" button. Click then on + to select from a file or on the clip button to add from the clipboard. You can also crop the picture by selecting an area with the mouse and clicking on the scissors.

For the size of the recipe, you can either input the number of servings and the serving size, or leave the number of servings to zero and specify the total yield of the recipe. If you leave the serving size or yield empty, it is taken to be 1 for scaling purpose.

Shopping items tab

Linking to the database of grocery items

The main purpose of the Shopping item tab is to link the ingredients to the database of grocery items. The software attempts to link the ingredients automatically. The ingredients it couldn't link are displayed in a pull-down menu in red. Click on the arrow to display the possible choices from the database. To get another set of choices, type an ingredient name in the field and click again on the arrow.

After establishing a new link, the software will ask you if you want to add the ingredient name to the dictionary to establish the link automatically. This way, the software learns your preferences and the more you use it, the easier and faster it will become to add a recipe.

If there are no corresponding ingredient in the database, you can add it by clicking the button next to the pull-down menu.

To link an ingredient to a different item of the database, select the ingredient and click on the magic wand button. The ingredient will be displayed again displayed in red. If you leave it like that, it will be re-linked to the database using the automatic rules when you save the recipe or leave the Shopping items tab.

Advanced options

The Shopping item tab provides also some advanced options. Note that these options are not necessary in usual cases. Only use them when you know what you are doing.

  1. Linking an ingredient to a different ingredient from the database. For example, if the recipe requires egg yolk, you may want to link them to whole eggs since this is what you have to purchase. When you do that, DO NOT add this link to the dictionary or it will affect all the recipes with egg yolk. Note also that this will affect the nutritional analysis of the recipe too.
  2. Specify a different quantity. It is almost always better to change the quantity in the Recipe tab. You can change the quantity in this tab if you want to purchase a quantity different that the one specified in the recipe. This option should not be used to convert the recipe quantities to a different unit. This is done preferably by setting the preferred shopping unit of the ingredient in the main database editor.
  3. Deselect the checkbox on the left hand-side for optional ingredients, so that they are not added to the shopping list by default. Note that the checkbox is automatically unchecked if the ingredient is listed as optional in the Recipe tab.
  4. Deselect the checkbox on the right hand-side so that the ingredient is not included in the nutritional analysis.
  5. Define the weight of the unit of measure of the ingredient by clicking on the balance sign. Defining the weight here will only affect this recipe. It is generally better to give the unit weight in the nutritional information editor to enable the unit conversion in all the recipes.

Cooked indicator

The "cooked" indicator may appear next to the ingredient name if the quantity of the cooked ingredient is given in the Recipe tab - for example: 1 cup cooked rice . This affects how the nutritional information, the cost and the shopping quantities are computed.

Shop'NCook Home