Recipe Nutrition Calculator

Build the label for any recipe, ingredient by ingredient

Add each ingredient with its weight in grams, say how many servings the recipe makes, and this calculator sums a built-in reference database (standard per-100 g values for common ingredients) into the whole recipe, then divides honestly by your servings: calories, protein, carbohydrate, fat, fibre and sugar, per serving and per recipe, with an ingredient-by-ingredient breakdown showing exactly where every number came from. A “custom ingredient” row takes values straight off a packet label for anything not listed. Weigh in the state you use the ingredient (dry rice, raw chicken), because the values are for the ingredient as listed.

Used only for the per-100 g cooked line. Baking and roasting mostly lose water.

Disclaimer: This calculator gives estimates for general information only. It is not financial, medical or other professional advice, and it is not a substitute for laboratory analysis or a registered dietitian. Reference values are averages; real ingredients vary.

What this calculator does

Recipe nutrition is bookkeeping, not magic: every ingredient contributes its nutrients in proportion to its weight, the contributions add, and the serving is the total divided by how many servings there genuinely are. The failure modes of home-made labels are almost never the arithmetic; they are mismatched ingredients (cooked values on dry weights), fantasy serving counts, and ingredients estimated by eye. So the tool shows its working in a full breakdown table, uses raw/as-listed reference values from standard food composition data, and lets you enter packet-label values for anything branded or unusual, because a label you hold beats a database average every time.

How to use it

  • Weigh, do not scoop. A “cup” of flour varies by tens of grams between kitchens; grams are what the database speaks. If a recipe is in cups, weigh your cup once and use that figure forever.
  • Match the state. The listed values are for the ingredient as named (dry rice, raw chicken breast, raw potato). Rice nearly triples in weight as it cooks by absorbing water, so cooked values on dry weights is the single most common way home labels go wrong by hundreds of calories.
  • Count everything that stays in the dish. Cooking oil absorbed, marinades that are eaten, the sugar in the sauce. Oil left in the pan is the honest exception; estimate the absorbed share rather than the poured amount.
  • Servings are the honesty dial. The per-serving figures are only as truthful as the serving count. Weigh the finished dish, divide by a realistic portion, and let that be the serving count: a tray that “serves 8” on the recipe but feeds 5 has five-serving nutrition whatever the recipe claims.

The method

  • Per ingredient: nutrient total = grams used × (reference value per 100 g) / 100, for calories, protein, carbohydrate, fat, fibre and sugar.
  • Recipe total: the sum over all ingredients. Per serving: the total divided by the servings entered.
  • Yield line (optional): if the finished dish weighs less than the raw total (water loss), nutrients per 100 g of finished dish rise in proportion; the tool shows that line only when a yield figure is given, and no nutrient is created or destroyed by the adjustment, only concentrated.
  • No retention fudge factors. Some vitamin losses in cooking are real but ingredient- and method-specific; rather than invent adjustments, this tool reports the six label nutrients, which are comparatively stable, and says so.

Worked examples

The plain sponge base. 500 g of plain flour plus 100 g of sugar, eight servings. Flour brings 1,820 kcal, sugar 387: the recipe totals 2,207 kcal, protein 51.50 g, carbohydrate 481.50 g, fat 5.00 g. Per serving: 275.88 kcal, 6.44 g protein, 60.19 g carbohydrate, 0.63 g fat. The breakdown table shows the uncomfortable truth about sponge: it is flour and sugar all the way down, and the fat arrives only when the butter and eggs join the recipe.

The yield line. Bake that batter and lose 10 percent of the weight as steam: the finished cake still holds 2,207 kcal in 540 g instead of 600, so 100 g of cake carries 408.70 kcal rather than 367.83. Nothing was added in the oven; the same energy simply sits in less water, which is why per-100 g comparisons between raw ingredients and finished dishes mislead without a yield figure.

Reading your results

Read the breakdown column first: in most recipes one or two ingredients supply nearly all the calories, and those are the only substitutions that move the label (the recipe scaling calculator linked below exists for testing exactly those swaps). Read per-serving against per-100 g carefully: the serving figure depends on your honesty about servings, the 100 g figure does not, so the 100 g line is the one to compare between recipes. And read fibre and sugar as the quality signals they are: two recipes at equal calories rarely are at equal fibre.

Limitations

  • Database values are averages of a variable food. Cheese, meat and produce vary by producer, season and cut; the reference figures are the centre of a real range, and branded products should go in as custom rows from their own labels.
  • The ingredient list is the common core, not the world’s pantry. Fourteen staples cover most home recipes; anything else belongs in the custom row, which is a feature of honest labelling, not a gap to apologise for.
  • Absorption and loss are estimates. Oil uptake in frying, marinade left behind, water gained by grains and lost by roasts all move real values by amounts only weighing the finished dish can settle.
  • This is not a medical tool. It builds an informational label for a recipe. Dietary management of a condition belongs with clinicians who know the patient; the disclaimer above the results is meant literally.

Frequently asked questions

Why does my total differ from the recipe website’s label?

Usually one of three causes: their serving count differs from yours (the fastest way to halve a label is to double the servings), their database matched a different form of an ingredient (cooked where yours is dry is the classic), or they omitted an ingredient like the cooking oil. The breakdown table here is the debugging tool: compare it line by line and the disagreement always localises to a row.

Should I enter raw or cooked weights?

The weight of the ingredient as you add it, matched to the form named in the list: dry rice weighed dry, chicken weighed raw, potato weighed raw and peeled as you use it. If you only know a cooked weight for something, weigh it in that form next time and note your own per-100 g figure as a custom row; borrowed cooked values from memory are where labels quietly go wrong.

What does the yield figure actually change?

Only the per-100 g finished line. Totals and per-serving figures are fixed by the ingredients and the serving count; yield describes how concentrated the finished dish is after water loss or gain. Leave it blank and nothing is assumed; enter the finished weight as a percentage of the raw total when you want to compare your dish, gram for gram, with a shop product.

Can I use this to label food I sell?

It gives a solid estimate for planning and comparison, and small producers often start from database calculations. Formal labelling rules in most places accept calculated values in defined circumstances but also expect them to be defensible, which in practice means documented databases, real weights and, for anything beyond the smallest scale, professional or laboratory verification. Treat this as the draft, not the filing.

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Method: ingredient weights multiplied by standard per-100 g reference values (US government food composition data averages), summed over the recipe and divided by servings; yield adjusts only the per-100 g finished line. Last reviewed: 15 October 2026.