How To Write A Food Formula That Makes Sense To A Manufacturer

Sometimes — well actually most of the time — I get calls from start ups asking me how they can scale up their recipe to industrial size. The first thing I always ask is,

“Is your formula in percentages? Because that's what manufacturers need to see it in.”

Crickets chirping in the distance— silence on the line…

The client usually says, “I measure my liquids with a measuring cup and I use teaspoons to weigh out my salt and sugar— is that ok?”

I answer NO!  A recipe and a formula are not really the same thing (although they are often used interchangeably).

Recipe

A recipe is what you make in your house and records your amounts in cups, tablespoons and pinches.

Formula

A formula is how a professional specialty food manufacturer will document your information and is based on pounds, kilograms, grams and other weight measurements. These weights are then converted to percentages so any amount or batch size can be made on those confirmed percentages.

This means that if you have 2 cups of water in your recipe you have to weigh it out— and 2 cups of honey will not weigh the same amount as that water, and a cup of corn syrup will also have a different weight. This is because all these ingredients have different densities. The density of water is 1 gram per 1 ml (volume) but the density of honey is about 1.4 gram per 1 ml (volume) and different types of honey even have different densities!

Converting a Recipe to a Formula

Here is a sample of a simple conversion of a homemade recipe to a professional industrial formulation:

First convert your cups and teaspoons into weight (in grams).

Then, convert your recipe in grams into percentages.

In Conclusion

It’s very simple math — you just need to keep in mind that in food science manufacturing world, there is no such things as a cup, spoonful, pinch or feather dusting. Everything has to be in weight only!

About The Author

Rachel Zemser is a Certified Culinary Scientist, with experience and degrees in both food science and culinary arts. She has a BS in Food Science from the University of Massachusetts, an MS degree in Food Microbiology from the University of Illinois and a culinary arts degree from the New York Restaurant School/Art Institute.She has been working in the food industry for 18 years in both technical and creative roles and has been widely published in trade journals like Culinology, Food Product Design, Prepared Foods, The World of Food Ingredients and Food Processing. She spent 3 years at Unilever working as a microbiologist, 5 years at Kagome Inc. as their R&D chef and almost 3 years at Plum Organics Inc. Rachel’s home base is in San Francisco but she spends most her time all over the U.S. working with both large and small start up companies assisting them with their food science and R&D. Rachel’s work experience can be viewed on LinkedIn and she regularly tweets about the food industry.  

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