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Write a recipe card that scales to any number of servings, then download it as a printable Word file.
A recipe card is a single page holding one recipe: what it makes, what goes in it, and what to do. The number it serves is the part that makes the quantities mean anything, which is why it belongs on the card rather than in someone memory.
5 steps
One Word document, laid out as a card and ready to print. Nothing you type is sent to a server.
1. Header
The recipe name, where it came from, and a line carrying servings, prep and cook time.
2. Ingredients
Amount and item in two columns, at whatever servings you set, with fractions kept as fractions.
3. Method
Your lines, numbered, with room between them so it reads while you are cooking.
4. Notes and scale
Anything worth keeping, plus a line recording what it was scaled from and where scaling stops being linear.
An amount that is not a number, such as a pinch or to taste, is carried across untouched. It does not scale, and a card claiming otherwise would be wrong.
Excel
Double click the download. If Excel shows a yellow protected view bar, click Enable Editing so the formulas calculate.
Google Sheets
Upload it to Drive and open it, or use File then Import then Upload inside an existing sheet. Formatting and formulas both carry across.
Numbers on a Mac
Open it directly. Numbers converts the workbook and keeps the totals working, though the yellow header fill may shift slightly.
Formula
new amount = written amount x (new servings / original servings)original servings = what the recipe was written for. Without it the quantities scale against nothing
fractions = kept as fractions and snapped to a kitchen one, because 0.6667 tsp is worse than useless at a counter
words = a pinch, to taste, a splash. Returned untouched, because they do not scale
where it breaks = salt, spice and raising agents scale less than proportionally, and cooking time barely scales at all
Worked Example
Carbonara for four, scaled to six
Did you know? Raising agents are the clearest case of scaling breaking down. Doubling a cake does not double the baking powder: too much gas makes a crumb that rises fast and collapses, so bakers scale it by roughly the square root of the batch rather than by the batch.
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