Linking Recipes

Tips

When you create a recipe comprised of Prep Recipes and other ingredients, CostGuard can scale all the parts at one time. For example, if your Chicken Alfredo has a yield of one serving and you want to convert to three hundred servings, click the convert button, type in the new yield, and all component recipes will be scaled as well. CostGuard will show the amounts needed for each prep recipe on the Ingredient Tab. For more information on converting, click here.

With CostGuard, you can link recipes. The recipe for Chicken Alfredo is homemade chicken strips (a prep recipe) with Alfredo sauce (a prep recipe) with a few other ingredients.  Since Alfredo Sauce can be used for other dishes, such as Pasta with Alfredo Sauce, linking ties prep or sub-recipes with a main dish with a single keystroke.  If you need to make a change to the Alfredo sauce, you make the change just once, and that change automatically ripples through all the recipes using Alfredo sauce.

 

This is the technique used to create Menus in CostGuard.  You can also use it if you have a series of recipes with similar ingredients, such as the lettuce, tomato, and mustard for sandwiches.  How does CostGuard do this?  CostGuard loads Serving, Prep, Menu, and Food List recipes into the ingredient file.  When you click the  button, these recipes are available for you to add as an ingredient.  You can scale, requisition, and print the final recipe with each sub-recipe included. 

 

If you would like to review the different types of recipes,  click here.

 

To create Linked Recipes

1.       Create and save each component recipe separately. 

Using Chicken Alfredo as an example, create a recipe called “Alfredo Sauce”. Save it as a prep recipe.  Then create the “chicken strips” as a Prep Recipe.  When you are finished creating the component recipes, move to step two.

2.       Create the final recipe.  As you enter the ingredients, the recipes are listed on the Items/Recipe pop-up list.  Treat the prep recipes as if they are a separate ingredient.

Using Chicken Alfredo again as the example, add the two prep recipes as ingredients.  You can also add Inventory Items such as the fettuccine and peas as well.   

3.       For the Method Tab, enter in the directions for the finished product.

For the Chicken Alfredo recipe, the Method Tab shows how to create the dish.  Since the method for making the Alfredo sauce is in that recipe, there is no need to repeat it here.  If you want to print out all parts of the recipe including the main and prep recipes, use the Print Linked Recipe feature on the Recipe Tree.  For more information on Recipe Tree, click here.

4.       The rest of the tabs, Categories, Prep, and Nutrition are entered the same as a regular unlinked recipe. 

For more information on those tabs, click here.

5.       After creating the recipe, you can use all of CostGuard’s features including scaling, printing, category searches, and the pricing and Yield portion boxes.

All of the information in the prep recipes is included in these features.  For example, the Current Cost field includes the information from the Prep Recipes for its calculations.

6.       When finished, click the main tab to save the final recipe.

The Prep Recipes that you created are available for other recipes and dishes.

7.       To Create a Menu using the Linking Feature, start by creating a new Recipe.  Name it after the Menu such as Dinner Menu.

Another example is to name it after the function name, such as Carlson-Baltes Wedding.

8.       Change the Recipe Type to Menu

For more information on how to change a type, click here.

9.       Click the Ingredients Tab.  Click the  button to add the Recipes.

Add in all of the Recipes, and then go back and edit the Qty and Unit.  When you are finished, you can click on the Main Tab and enter the per person price for the menu.

10.   When finished, click Close to Save.  The Menu is now saved for future use.