7.2. Creating a recipe

Just like when you add new foods, you can write recipes in Pantry by using the Pantry XML file. While you enter foods in Pantry XML files by using the foods element, to enter recipes you use the recipe element.

7.2.1. Creating a recipes file and a recipe element

To create a Pantry XML file, start your favorite text editor and open a text file. For the purposes of our example we'll use pantry.xml, though you can create any filename that ends with .xml.

As we saw earlier when we created new foods, the root element of a Pantry XML file is pantry. Each recipe is contained in a recipe element. The recipe elemen thas the same attributes as the food element that we learned about earlier:

name, group, refuse, refDesc, date, meal, qty, comment, unit

Of all these attributes, you are required to set only the unit and qty attributes. You can leave as many of the other ones out as you wish, though ordinarily you will set the name and group attributes while leaving many of the others blank.

Just like when you create a new food using the food element, you must set the unit attribute to one of the available units for the recipe. Pantry will automatically create the g, oz, and lb units for you. You can also have Pantry create a serving unit, as we will discuss shortly.

For our example, we will create a recipe with the name Easy Corn Bread. As you will see, the new recipe has its unit set to serving; shortly we will see exactly how this works. You will also notice that many of the attributes for the various traits, such as date and meal, are not set at all; Pantry will set such traits to the empty string.

Example 7.1. Creating the recipe element

<pantry>
<recipe name="Easy Corn Bread"
	group="Baked Products" pctRefuse='' refDesc='' 
	qty='1' unit='serving'>
</recipe>
</pantry>

7.2.2. Setting the yield of a recipe

Next you will need to set the yield of your recipe. The yield element has three attributes: grams, servings, and text. The servings attribute is easiest to understand, so we will discuss it first.

7.2.2.1. The servings attribute

Often when you make a recipe, you split it into an even number of servings. If that is the case for your recipe, you may enter an appropriate value for the servings attribute. Pantry will automatically create a serving available unit for the food in this case. If you do not wish to specify a number of servings, you can simply not use the servings attribute at all.

For our corn bread example, we will say that the recipe makes nine servings.

7.2.2.2. The grams attribute

In order for Pantry to accurately calculate the nutrient content of a particular amount of food, it needs to know what the total mass of your completed recipe is, after it has been fully prepared (that is, after cooking, baking, mixing, etc., as the case may be.)

Pantry can "guess" what the total mass of your completed recipe is. Pantry guesses by adding up the mass of all the ingredients you entered for the recipe. To have Pantry guess for you, simply use an empty string for the grams attribute, or just leave the grams attribute out entirely. However, you will often find that the completed recipe weighs significantly less than the mass of all the ingredients. This is because a lot of water often evaporates as you cook or bake foods. Thus, for the most accurate results, you may enter the mass of your completed recipe so that Pantry may take it into account. To do this, enter the appropriate value (in grams) for the grams attribute.

However, if you have entered a servings attribute, and you will use only the serving available unit when you use the recipe, then entering a grams attribute will do you no good. This is because Pantry will calculate each serving so that it is the appropriate fraction of the total, but the actual total mass will not matter.

I always cut my cornbread into nine neat squares, and I always eat only one square at a time. Thus, since I will use only the servings available unit for the corn bread, I will simply enter an empty string for the grams attribute.

7.2.2.3. The text attribute

Finally, you may enter any text you wish for the text attribute. This text can be used to describe the yield of the recipe.

I make my corn bread in a 8x8-inch dish, so I will make an appropriate entry for the yield element.

7.2.2.4. A complete yield element

Here is an example yield element:

Example 7.2. Setting the recipe yield

<pantry>
<recipe name="Easy Corn Bread"
	group="Baked Products" pctRefuse='' refDesc='' 
	qty='1' unit='serving'>
        <yield grams='' servings='9' text='One square pan' />
</recipe>
</pantry>

7.2.3. Setting the ingredients of a recipe

No recipe is complete without ingredients. Each single ingredient is represented by a ingredient element. The ingredient element has four attributes: name, qty, unit, comment, and file.

As you will recall, each ingredient in a Pantry recipe is a another Pantry food. These foods come from another Pantry file. For each ingredient, you will specify the source file by specifying the path to the file in the file attribute. It is best to use a full, absolute path specification here. If you use a relative path specification, it will be resolved relative to the working directory of the pantry command when it is run, not the directory of the XML file. This is confusing, which is why I recommend using an absolute path specification.

For each ingredient, Pantry will look in the file specified for the food you specify using the name attribute. Unlike much of the rest of Pantry, the text of the name attribute is not a regular expression. Instead, you must exactly match every space, and you must exactly match the mixture of upper- and lower-case letters, as well.

The qty attribute is simply the quantity of the ingredient. As with most other numeric values in Pantry, you may use an integer, a floating-point number, a fraction, or even a mixed number.

The unit attribute is an exact match of the available unit you wish to use for this ingredient. As with the name attribute, this is case-sensitive.

Finally, the last attribute, comment, is optional. This can be whatever helpful text you may wish to enter.

Here is our corn bread example, complete with all its ingredients.

Example 7.3. A recipe with its ingredients

<pantry>
<recipe name="Easy Corn Bread"
	group="Baked Products" pctRefuse='' refDesc='' 
	qty='1' unit='serving'>

        <yield grams='' servings='9' text='One square pan' />

        <ingredient name='Wheat flour, white, all-purpose, enriched, unbleached' 
            qty='1 1/4' unit='cup' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />
        <ingredient name='Cornmeal, whole-grain, yellow' 
            qty='3/4' unit='cup' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />
        <ingredient name='Sugars, granulated'
            qty='1/4' unit='cup' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />
        <ingredient name='Leavening agents, baking powder, double-acting, straight phosphate'
            qty='2' unit='tsp' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />
        <ingredient name='Salt, table'
            qty='1/2' unit='tsp' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />
        <ingredient name='Milk, reduced fat, fluid, 2% milkfat, with added vitamin A'
            qty='1' unit='cup' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />
        <ingredient name='Oil, canola and soybean'
            qty='1/4' unit='cup' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />
        <ingredient name='Egg, whole, raw, fresh'
            qty='1' unit='large' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />
</recipe>
</pantry>

7.2.4. Setting the available units for a recipe

Finally, you may create additional available units for the food. Pantry automatically creates the g, oz, and lb units for you; in addition, if you specified a servings attribute to the yield element, as we discussed above, then Pantry will also automatically create a serving available unit. If you wish to create any additional available units, you will need to know the weight (in grams) of that unit. If for instance you are entering a recipe for cookies and you want to create an avaiable unit for one cookie, you'll need to know the weight in grams of one cookie.

To create available units, create one or more unit elements. Each unit element will have both name and grams attributes. As I stated above, I always eat one serving of corn bread, so I do not have any use for the units element here. However, for the sake of illustration, we'll say that a large piece of corn bread weighs 70 grams.

Example 7.4. A recipe's units

<pantry>
<recipe name="Easy Corn Bread"
	group="Baked Products" pctRefuse='' refDesc='' 
	qty='1' unit='serving'>

        <yield grams='' servings='9' text='One square pan' />

        <ingredient name='Wheat flour, white, all-purpose, enriched, unbleached' 
            qty='1 1/4' unit='cup' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />
        <ingredient name='Cornmeal, whole-grain, yellow' 
            qty='3/4' unit='cup' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />
        <ingredient name='Sugars, granulated'
            qty='1/4' unit='cup' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />
        <ingredient name='Leavening agents, baking powder, double-acting, straight phosphate'
            qty='2' unit='tsp' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />
        <ingredient name='Salt, table'
            qty='1/2' unit='tsp' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />
        <ingredient name='Milk, reduced fat, fluid, 2% milkfat, with added vitamin A'
            qty='1' unit='cup' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />
        <ingredient name='Oil, canola and soybean'
            qty='1/4' unit='cup' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />
        <ingredient name='Egg, whole, raw, fresh'
            qty='1' unit='large' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />

        <unit name='large piece' grams='70' />
</recipe>
</pantry>

7.2.5. Directions for a recipe

Finally, you need something to tell you how to put together all those ingredients. You can do this by including an optional directions element. Enclose each paragraph of your directions inside a p element. Eventually I will probably add additional formatting tags, such as b and i, but for now you're stuck with just p.

Example 7.5. Recipe directions

<pantry>
<recipe name="Easy Corn Bread"
	group="Baked Products" pctRefuse='' refDesc='' 
	qty='1' unit='serving'>

        <yield grams='' servings='9' text='One square pan' />

        <ingredient name='Wheat flour, white, all-purpose, enriched, unbleached' 
            qty='1 1/4' unit='cup' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />
        <ingredient name='Cornmeal, whole-grain, yellow' 
            qty='3/4' unit='cup' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />
        <ingredient name='Sugars, granulated'
            qty='1/4' unit='cup' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />
        <ingredient name='Leavening agents, baking powder, double-acting, straight phosphate'
            qty='2' unit='tsp' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />
        <ingredient name='Salt, table'
            qty='1/2' unit='tsp' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />
        <ingredient name='Milk, reduced fat, fluid, 2% milkfat, with added vitamin A'
            qty='1' unit='cup' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />
        <ingredient name='Oil, canola and soybean'
            qty='1/4' unit='cup' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />
        <ingredient name='Egg, whole, raw, fresh'
            qty='1' unit='large' comment='' file='/home/massysett/pantry-data/master' />

        <unit name='large piece' grams='70' />

        <directions>
            <p>

                Heat oven to 400 degrees F. Grease 8 or 9-inch pan.
                Combine dry ingredients. Stir in milk, oil, and egg,
                mixing just until dry ingredients are moistened. Pour
                batter into prepared pan. Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until
                light golden brown and wooden pick inserted in center
                comes out clean. Serve warm.

            </p>
        </directions>
</recipe>
</pantry>