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The Art of Measuring Recipes: The Standardized Recipe

© Andrew A. Orr

A standardized recipe applies only to one operation. Many people have the mistaken idea that a standardized recipe contains a foolproof set of ingredients, amounts, and instructions that will work every time in every kitchen for every cook. There is no such thing. If you transplant a recipe standardized for one kitchen to another kitchen and another set of cooks, it may work or it may not. If it works in the new kitchen after thorough testing of a small amount, it will be extended to large yields and adopted as the operation's standardized recipe. If it does not work, that kitchen may make adjustments in the recipe to fit its equipment and its cooks and its clientele and to achieve the precise yield and quality standards required. When all the necessary adjustments are incorporated, it then becomes a standardized recipe for that operation.

The standardized recipe is useful in several ways. For one thing, it helps to assure that a product offered by the establishment is consistent from one cook to another. A customer who brings friends in to taste a well remembered mushroom soup would not find the soup of memory gone and a new cook making a very different product. The new cook can refer to the standardized recipe, and it will indicate the special things that give that particular mushroom soup its character. Each establishment's standardized recipes are records of dishes that have proved to be successful for that operation.

Another function of standardized recipes is to provide a basis for cost analysis. Accurate costs per serving can be projected and analyzed from the precise data the recipes contain. Many standardized recipes have the cost data recorded on the recipe card. Some establishments keep their standardized recipes on a computer, where changes in ingredients and costs can easily be kept up to date. When cost problems occur, when food costs run higher than projected. The quantities and costs of items are compared to quantities and costs that should have been used, in order to see what is wrong and how to correct it.

With microcomputers being used in increasing numbers, the standardized recipe is playing an ever more important role in making an inefficient industry more efficient. Good standardized recipes coupled with the computer enable management to control expenses or costs even before they are incurred. Current market prices, availability, and alternate ingredients can be programmed into the computer so that costs can be determined instantly before food products are bought and used. Before the computer, figuring costs with a pencil or a calculator took hours and was seldom done. Thus the standardized recipe is one of management's most useful tools for achieving profitability, and profitability is the one essential in the commercial kitchen- something the cook must never forget.

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