Recipe Converter

This calculator scales a recipe's ingredient amounts up or down to hit a different number of servings. It computes a single Conversion Factor as Desired Servings divided by Original Servings, then multiplies each of up to three ingredient amounts by that same factor to get the new quantities. Original Servings and Desired Servings move the Conversion Factor by comparable magnitude, just via different arithmetic: Original Servings sits in the denominator, so halving it doubles the factor, while Desired Servings sits in the numerator, so doubling it also doubles the factor -- neither input dominates the other.

The three ingredient amount inputs, meanwhile, are completely inert to the Conversion Factor itself -- they don't influence how the factor is calculated at all, since the factor is purely a servings ratio; the ingredient amounts are simply what gets multiplied by that ratio afterward. This straight-line scaling works well for most liquids, produce, and proteins, but real cooking doesn't always scale linearly: strong spices, salt, leavening agents like baking soda or yeast, and cooking times typically need to be scaled more conservatively than a simple multiplication when a recipe is doubled or tripled, a nuance this calculator does not adjust for. It also assumes consistent units between the original and scaled amounts and only handles three ingredients at a time.