Enter ingredient quantities as percentages

You can enter recipe quantities as weights or as percentages. With percentage-based quantities, each ingredient is entered as its share of the total recipe, which is useful when you're working from a formulation or specification. Foodworks treats a percentage-based recipe as 100g of ingredients, so 25% of an ingredient is 25g.

Turn on percentage-based quantities

For a new recipe

1. In Foodworks, create a recipe.
2. On the Ingredients tab, turn on Percentage-based quantities.
3. Add your ingredients and enter each quantity as a percentage.
4. When you're ready, click Publish.

For an existing recipe

1. In Foodworks, open the recipe and click Edit.
2. On the Ingredients tab, turn on Percentage-based quantities.
3. Check the converted percentages, then click Publish.

Each ingredient weight, including any entered in volume or serve measures, is converted to its percentage of the total recipe weight, rounded to 3 decimal places.

Important: The recipe's original weights are not restored by changing back to weight-based quantities. If you need them, make a copy of the recipe before you turn on percentage-based quantities.

Enter percentages

Enter any value from 0 to 100. Press Enter or click out of the cell to save, or press Escape to cancel. A value of 0 is kept as 0.

The anchor ingredient

One ingredient in the recipe is the anchor ingredient. Its percentage is calculated automatically as 100% minus all the other ingredients, so the recipe always totals 100%. The anchor's percentage is read-only and is shown in blue, whereas the other percentages are editable in black. 

• By default, the first ingredient with a food and a quantity above 0 becomes the anchor.
• To choose a different anchor, select Set as anchor ingredient on that ingredient. To remove it, select Clear anchor ingredient.
• A recipe has only one anchor ingredient, even if it has several sections.
• When you change the anchor, the previous anchor keeps its percentage. If that percentage was negative, it resets to 0.
• If you delete the anchor ingredient, no other ingredient takes over. Set a new anchor if you want the recipe to keep balancing to 100%.

If the other ingredients add up to more than 100%, the anchor's percentage becomes negative and is shown as an error. Reduce the other percentages until the anchor is 0% or more.

Publishing

• You can't publish while any ingredient is missing a percentage or has a percentage outside 0–100.

Serves and Yield

• Serve settings are locked while percentage-based quantities are on. A number-of-serves setting becomes a single 100g serve.
• Yield can still be edited.
• New percentage-based recipes start with 1 serve and 100% yield.

Turn off percentage-based quantities

Open the recipe, click Edit and turn off Percentage-based quantities on the Ingredients tab. Each percentage becomes the same number of grams, for example 60% becomes 60g.

You can't turn off percentage-based quantities while any ingredient has a percentage outside 0–100.

Troubleshooting and FAQs

The anchor ingredient shows a negative percentage. The other ingredients add up to more than 100%. Check their percentages and reduce them until the anchor is 0% or more.

I can't edit an ingredient's percentage. If the percentage value is shown in blue text, it's the anchor ingredient, which is calculated automatically. To edit it, set a different ingredient as the anchor.

I turned off percentage-based quantities and my original weights are gone. Turning it off converts percentages to grams (for example, 60% to 60g). It does not  restore the weights from before percentage-based quantities were turned on.

Why can't I change the number of serves? Some of the serve settings are locked while percentage-based quantities are on. The recipe is treated as 100g, with a single 100g serve. You can change the Serve weight (g).